Harry Potter - Rag-Doll
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Harry Potter is Rag-Doll, a contortionist thief who can fold himself and uses his power to steal. Post-Hogwarts.
1. Chapter 1 Rag-Doll

Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter. I do own this one-shot.

Author's Note - A while back I made it clear I was no longer writing any more Harry Potter stories. I had had enough of people telling me I was writing cliche stories, so I decided to retire. But I've changed my mind - for now - I'm back, and I've got a few things I want to upload before I retire from writing any more stories in this particular fandom again.

Enjoy, and please feel free to let me know what you think. Also, I don't own the DC character that inspired this one-shot, Rag-Doll, the contortionist master thief.

My thanks to White Angel of Auralon for letting me borrow the way they came up with for getting rid of Horcruxes.

* * *

Rag-Doll.

_He had been thrown back into the Cupboard under the Stairs for accidentally knocking a knife off of the top though Dudley had deliberately smashed a cup on the floor of the kitchen to get him into trouble - not very difficult since the Dursleys were always prepared to lash out at him without any actual reasons._

_Aunt Petunia had screamed at him, told him to use his 'freak stuff' to repair the cup, confirming in his mind the Dursleys __**knew **__he could move stuff with his mind, and even unlock doors whenever he could, but he didn't dare because it was just what the Dursleys wanted - more justification to beat him up, not that they really needed to. _

_He could barely remember the rest of it - his head was still aching from the pain from where Uncle Vernon had struck him hard enough to knock him virtually senseless, so the whole thing was practically a terrible blur. Stars had exploded in his vision, and he had felt disembodied as though his mind had been torn out of his body. He was chucked bodily into the cupboard and the door was slammed shut with a force that shook the door nearly off of its hinges._

* * *

Harry barely made a sound as he flew through the air on his broomstick towards the rooftop of the Brighton Churchill Centre, peering through the eye-holes of his mask while he flew closer to the mall. The broomstick, protected from view by enchantments, allowed its flyer to mentally prepare for the task at hand while making sure the muggles down below did not notice him - even if someone peered through the windows of their flat, they wouldn't have seen him. In the meantime, he went about reinforcing his occlumency barriers to keep him calm, but he had been doing this for years at around his childhood, so all he really felt was the familiar thrill he always felt whenever he was about to do a job.

He looked down, casting his eyes briefly over the lights from the city below. He didn't normally use a broomstick to fly towards a job; most of the time he would either climb or walk to the site before putting on his outfit.

Reaching into the satchel hanging from his shoulder, Harry poured himself a light cup of coffee from the thermos flask he'd prepared earlier and took a sip while he listened to the music on his iPod, and listened to a few downloaded movie soundtracks which mingled with the sweet sounds of Beethoven's fifth symphony. Music was something he had picked up gradually over the years - it hadn't been something he had much cause to bother with growing up, especially since the Dursleys weren't really music lovers themselves even if Dudley loved creating rackets, though the obese idiot had always shouted and screamed whenever he played on his ridiculous drum sets.

Dudley had never really gotten it into his head having a drum set did not necessarily give you musical talent. Harry had always had the impression Aunt Petunia had agreed with him there, but she'd always caved in, and the sounds alone had put him off music almost for life. It wasn't until he had left Hogwarts and actually listened to the music on a radio he heard tracks which actually deserved to be classified as music, not the cacophony he'd been forced to endure as a kid.

As he listened to the music on the iPod, he flew closer and closer to the mall.

* * *

_He flicked his hand slowly over the broken toy he'd salvaged from Dudley's pit of a second bedroom. It was one of those little toy soldiers that were made from plastic and came with a stand to hold it upright. Somehow Dudley had snapped it off in one of his frequent tantrums, but Harry didn't care what had set his cousin off that time - Dudley emulated his dear daddy in more ways than one, and besides the toy was a perfect test subject for one of his experiments. As he flicked his hand over the toy and the stand, the pair snapped together. Harry smiled, and he picked it up and held it to the light bulb which dimly lit up the cupboard so he could examine the re-connection, keeping his ears open for any sign of the Dursleys stomping down the stairs in case they suspected he was awake. It was a clean repair, and somehow his Power had fixed the toy so it looked like it hadn't been broken off. Once he saw that Harry grinned and moved onto his next experiment. _

_Harry moved over to the cupboard door and he raised his hand. Squinting with concentration, he flicked his hand over the door…._

_He gasped in shock as he heard the bolt gently slide back. Hesitantly he pushed the door. And it opened._

* * *

Harry gently flew in a circle around the rooftop of the Churchill Centre, flicking his wand to shut down the security systems of the roof which included any alarms and definitely all the CCTV cameras; when the whole thing was reviewed later, the muggles would think he had just found a blindspot and used it to get in. But truthfully he had used his magic to shut down the security.

Harry Potter was a Wizard. He was also a master cat burglar known in the muggle world as 'Rag-Doll.' It was a somewhat ridiculous name in itself, but it worked well for him since it garnered a lot of respect and awe nowadays as many criminals, both petty and serious, tried to seek him out so they could use his skills and knowledge to commit heists of their own. Well, sometimes he did take jobs on commission, but not all the time; Harry had no particular desire to be roped into something he genuinely did not want to be a part of. He'd had enough of that years ago.

When he was finished, he landed his broomstick gently on the roof.

* * *

_Being free of the cupboard under the stairs was magical! Granted - he was still locked in Number 4, a place that should replace the filthiest prison in human history, but being out of the cupboard was liberating though he knew he couldn't do anything more than walking softly around the ground floor for now. When Harry walked over to the backdoor, he looked out of the windows longingly. The moon was out so he could see the dim light illuminate the garden, sketching the garden shed, the outline of the fences which gave him the impression he was inside a three-dimensional cube. _

_Some of the moonlight reflected on the blades of grass in the back garden, and he could see the flower pots Aunt Petunia had forced him to work on many times in the past. _

_He looked longingly at the back garden, wishing he were out there. In the open. Free. It was so tempting for him to unlock the door and walk out, jump over the fence, and run away and never return. But he remembered the futility behind that. He remembered the last time he had tried to escape from the Dursleys. One minute he had been down the street… the next he was in Number 4 without any idea about what had happened. _

_Harry let out a sigh and kept looking._

* * *

After hiding his broomstick Harry padded over gently towards a ventilation grille and he flicked his wand over it, silently removing the grille from its housing and placing it on the rooftop not far away from the ventilation shaft. There was a fan in the way, the blades were spinning slowly, but it wasn't much of an obstacle to a wizard. Harry flicked his wand and carefully tore the entire thing out of the housings, ignoring the sparks as they flew through the air, cooking the air and the stench of ozone stank the air for a moment before the sea air blew the ozone away. What the muggles made of that, Harry did not know, and frankly did not care.

After slipping off his tennis shoes until he was wearing only his socks, he simply stepped lightly and nimbly towards the opening and bent down while he focused on his metamorphamagus abilities to make his body more pliant and flexible enough to squeeze himself into the ventilation shaft. He squeezed first his head and then his arms, twisting on himself slowly while using his legs to push himself forward into the opening. Once his whole body had been squeezed through the ventilation shaft, it was easy for him to move through it. Unlike in the movies where people who have to press themselves flat and push themselves along like a giant slug, Harry had no such problem; with his metamorphamagus abilities, which transfigured his body and bones into a more flexible form, it was easy for him to squeeze his way through, and twist in a corkscrew motion through the shaft while his legs propelled him through. He was also able to lengthen his arms and his fingers to find little holds he could anchor on, and use them to help him pull himself through the shafts while using his legs to pull him along with incredible speed

When he was halfway down the shaft, which only took him about thirty seconds, Harry paused and took out his wand to detect the nearest tracking spell he had cast earlier on. Harry had been in Brighton for over a fortnight already. He had spent most of his time exploring the city, touring the sights, and having as much fun as he could while he found a number of jewellery shops or anything in museums which tickled his fancy, or anything that he believed would be a worthwhile challenge for him and his skills in contortion or some of his other skills in burglary in order to find worthwhile clients.

Rag-Doll had allowed the petty criminals and minor mob bosses to hire him simply because it allowed him to create a reputation he could exploit for himself. Already he was on Interpol's wanted list, and the list of many other crime-fighting organisations, though it wasn't a surprise since he had worked hard in the past year to advertise himself.

There was no chance of them finding him, of course - his magical abilities and some common sense kept him from being identified, never mind caught. And muggles could not see through a disillusionment charm, and they had no defence from compulsion spells which told them to fuck off.

His outfit of a long-sleeved, slightly baggy black and white shirt, black trousers and the socks he wore for extra lightness and for stealth since it would be a dead giveaway for a burglar crawling through the shaft to be heard so silence was essential in his work, and his slightly large balaclava gave him a slightly unkempt appearance, but it worked better than what he had worn when he'd first started.

As Rag-Doll, Harry had broken into the Louvre art gallery in Paris and took a few pictures of himself and he had delivered the photos to media outlets in order to attract the attention of different criminals. During the heist, he had stolen the Mona Lisa and kept it on him for a good fortnight and copied it over seven times since he had spent a few years looking into the world for private collectors who'd take a copy in exchange for big bucks, and they had paid a lot of money. In the end, once he had sold over six copies of the Mona Lisa, he had returned the original and made the copies worthless but what had happened to the copies, Harry did not know, and he did not care either.

Unfortunately, his burglary of the Louvre had attracted unwanted attention.

Terrorists.

In hindsight, he suspected it was logical that suicide bombers or murderers who were like deranged children who were following a 'cause' without meaning would want his skills for their own ends, although they were more than capable of acting on their own, their approach was like a dragon in a china shop.

To Harry, there was no such thing as a worthy cause. The lies in the Death Eater organisation, how they believed pureblooded values meant more than anything else, how they believed they were saving the magical world when in fact they were causing more destruction and bringing their precious ideals to a swift end showed just how hypocritical they were.

He turned away from any terrorist who tried to offer him a place within their organisations because, to him, terrorism because of how much they reminded him of that psychopathic bunch of pureblood supremacists he'd dealt with in the magical world. The Death Eaters were a bunch of savage animals, thugs with a molecule thin layer of respectability spray-painted over themselves, and Lord Voldemort was a pretender, an angry child lashing out at the world while more than happy to wipe out millions of people and spreading fear and terror and revelling in the power it brought him.

When he had received word many terrorists wanted to use his abilities to steal or spy for them, Harry had turned them away - to him, terrorism didn't get you anywhere in the long run, and besides he had seen enough carnage to last a lifetime. Unfortunately, some of those organisations had rubbed him the wrong way, so he had taken care of them.

Anyway, the Louvre wasn't the only art gallery he had hit over the last year. He had travelled to Japan, China, and Australia to show he was an international thief, but the literal jewel in the crown had been when the Rag-Doll had incensed the British police and embarrassed them beyond belief was when he had managed to break through into the Tower of London and took a few photos of himself wearing a crown and holding the sceptre while throwing up one of the jewels in his free hand before he escaped without taking a thing because he knew he couldn't sell any of the jewels even though he had wanted to take a little bauble as a souvenir, but he had resisted the urge even though it was regular for him to commit a burglary and keep all but one item he didn't want to sell and placed it on a shelf like a trophy.

Although it didn't matter for some of his other heists, for that one and the others that past year which were meant to advertise his skills, Harry did not dare keep or sell anything he touched (the Mona Lisa did not count, that was simply a means to an end, and besides he had needed a nice beginning for his fortune), and the crown jewels were too hot to sell-off.

The crown jewel break-in had elicited a sharp cry of outrage, sparking off radio chats, newspaper articles which lasted months and months, and cracking down on the security everywhere. But the end result was what Rag-Doll wanted; criminals everywhere had been amazed by what he had done, and now they wanted him to commit all kinds of thefts for them. He'd had a busy year working for criminals for the highest bidder and now his bank accounts were higher than they had been in a while.

Okay, not all of the clients had been what he had wanted; some of them had just been a bunch of petty thieves with delusions of grandeur, but he had worked for corporations who were seeking an industrial spy or saboteur; okay, so they could have had their own people put into place for that type of work, but it was still interesting in itself, really.

Industrial espionage was easy when you knew how; all you needed was a good disguise, and since he was a metamorphamagus, it was simplicity in itself to find an employee, maybe someone who was undervalued so then you could borrow their appearance for a few days and use their access to steal secrets or something like that, or you could pretend to be a cleaner while applying disillusionment or notice-me-not charms over himself to prevent anything from properly taking notice of him.

In any way he did it, either by his 'Rag-Doll' guise or by using his ability to disguise himself without showing off his contortion abilities, it brought Rag-Doll to the forefront of However, Brighton was for him and him alone. He only planned to burgle a few places and that was it, to show everyone he wasn't in it for everyone else, but he was also going to commit thefts by himself and only for himself.

* * *

_He was wincing again after a nasty beating he'd received after his hair had grown back after Aunt Petunia had lopped chunks of it off after Uncle Vernon kept complaining about how messy his jet-black hair was. Again, but the fat pig that was his 'uncle' complained about everything about him from his height (what did they expect if they didn't feed or house him properly instead of shoving him headfirst in a cupboard under the stairs which was so cramped it was impossible for anyone to truly live in there for long periods while feeding him nothing but scraps of bread and meat with only shot glasses of water?) to his eye colour, how they kept saying his eyes were not normal. _

_But Harry paid them no mind. _

_He had grown to like some parts of his appearance, and his eyes were certainly one of them. He had grown more confident in himself since he had discovered he could do things with his mind, and he had been practising as well; he was now able to make himself go 'invisible,' or more accurately unnoticed by Dudley and his gang who simply could not leave him alone and were always trying to beat him up. _

_He lay there on the little cot, rolling on the filthy sheets and mattress that had not been cleaned in a long time - the Dursleys didn't believe in cleaning him up, believing that as a 'freak' like him didn't deserve to have clean sheets and pillows, but truthfully he was used to the stench and the sight of his own blood mingling with the old layers of blood which stained the sheets shades of brown and black. He wasn't worried about another layer of blood soaking the sheets. _

_In the darkness of the cupboard, he had the time he needed to think. How had his hair grown back? Could he really do that with his 'powers? Well, there was only one way to find out. Moaning quietly in pain as he twisted on himself, Harry reached out and pulled from under the cot a small mirror he had pinched off of Mrs Figg so he could look himself in the eye to ask himself why the Dursleys hated him so much though nowadays he could not really make himself care._

_After turning on the light with a bit of effort, Harry needed a few moments to blink the sudden harshness of the light out of his eyes before he focused on his reflection. Aside from the frozen expression of pain and more messier hair than normal he looked just like he always did, but Harry's eyes were focused on his hair, pondering the mystery that was his hair regrowing to its former length after Aunt Petunia had practically cut chunks out of it while leaving a path covering his scar, but then again his hair was not easy to cut; he remembered the trouble being taken to the barbers where the confused man had wondered why it was virtually impossible to trim his hair. _

_Harry looked at his hair, and he wondered how it would look if his hair was shorter, neater and less thick…_

_He looked into the mirror and reeled back in shock when he saw that his hair was shorter, neater and was less thick than it had been before. Once he was over his shock even after everything he had been practising since he had discovered he could move things with his mind alone Harry leaned forward and studied his reflection in the mirror again. He fingered his skin, noting the pale complexion he had worn for years, and he wondered how he could feel if his skin were a couple of shades darker, and he pictured himself having skin that showed someone who spent a lot of time outdoors…_

_After a few more experiments like this, always being able to return to his true appearance, Harry decided he'd had enough experimenting with his appearance and he laid back down on the cot… only to almost cry out in agony from the blows Vernon had delivered to his body. He was tired and he needed to get some sleep for tomorrow, but the pain in his body made it virtually impossible to move without causing even more pain. _

_Harry turned on his side as best as he could, and he reached out for the light switch, but his arm was not long enough and his arm was in the wrong place - it was pointing slightly lower down. Futile as it was, Harry continued to try to reach out and shut off the light, knowing if Vernon found out about him using the light at this time of night then the beating he'd suffered earlier would seem like a tap on the wrist in comparison. _

_As he lay there, struggling to reach, Harry wished his arm was long enough. And then it struck him; if he could change his appearance just by thinking about it then couldn't he alter the length of his arm and turn it into an arm which was more flexible than what he usually passed off normally. _

_Harry willed himself to concentrate on a longer arm, one that was flexible enough to twist around on itself to turn off the light…. suddenly his arm was longer than the one he usually had, and it was flexible, but to his surprise, it was more than flexible, he was able to twist his arm around until his very skin was easy to stretch and his bones felt almost like rubber so he could bend his arm outward. Wide-eyed with surprise, Harry switched off the light. _

_In his cupboard, Harry experimented with his contortionist abilities in the dead of night while he looked at the printouts from that book he'd found in the library which was spread neatly in front of him. It had taken him a while to find just one book on the subject - he had needed to grab a yoga book and show it to the kindly old librarian, who suspected what was really going on behind the closed doors of Number 4 but she knew she couldn't prove it, but just knowing he had someone he could count as a friend was more than enough for him, and asked her if there was anything a bit more in-depth and described flexibility, and even demonstrated walking on all fours with his arms and legs flexible once more thanks to the Power. _

_The librarian had been taken by surprise and crowed that she hadn't realised he was a contortionist. After that getting the book and the printouts were easy. _

_One of the first things he had learnt from the printouts was contortionists tended to have what was termed 'hyper-mobility' in their joints which was caused by a number of factors, but the point was people who had hyper-mobility in their joints were able to bend and fold their limbs and their spine in ways where they wouldn't experience pain, like a normal person would if they attempted to try out the same movements. _

_But the thing was Harry knew he wasn't naturally double or triple jointed, because he had once felt Uncle Vernon grab one of his twig-like arms and bend it until his elbow snapped (he pushed the memory aside; it didn't matter now, and besides he didn't like thinking about the agony he had gone through during his time at the Dursleys), he knew it came from the Power he had. _

_Some people might say it was cheating, but it wasn't. As he read the printouts from the library book because he knew the Dursleys would have destroyed the real thing since none of the Dursleys liked reading anything more complex than the TV guide, Harry followed each move slowly, concentrating on his limbs and spine. The cupboard under the stairs, for once, proved to be the most perfect place to train to become a contortionist, and he folded himself so neatly that as he lay on his stomach he folded his spine and brought both of his legs over his back, folding and bending both of his knees so the points of his toes and his feet were aimed at his cheeks, and he lengthened both of his legs, stretching them slightly to make the attempt possible. _

_He had come a long way in practising these past few weeks. He had experimented first with lengthening his lengths and his arms, but he had found they could not exceed a certain length. And they were so springy. Solid, but springy. _

_As he experimented with his contortionist moves, Harry wondered just how far he was going to take his experiments._

* * *

Opening the vent grille that led into one of the jewellery shops, Rag-Doll dropped down through the ceiling to the floor, turning his bones and muscles into something a bit more springy while simultaneously casting a spell to make the landing less brutal on his joints. He landed in a human ball, his legs and arms wrapped around his spine and head for protection. Once he was down from the vent, he stood up effortlessly and he steepled his hands together, taping the tips of his fingers softly on both hands as if he were trying to decide which display case should be dealt with first before he decided to get down to it.

Removing a small sack from underneath his baggy shirt, Rag-Doll magically unlocked each case while making sure the security cameras in the shop did not register what he was doing before he got to work.

* * *

_His first theft was at school, and when he looked back on the event when he was an adult he would think it very basic. But back then he was desperate for something to eat. Aunt Petunia had some very odd ideas about what he should and should not be eating or drinking, and she packed his lunch box with the bare minimum while Dudley received the lunchbox equivalent of a five-course meal. _

_All the other kids were the same; they might not have the same excess amount of food as Dudley did, but he was often left hungry. Harry had learnt that the best way to go about lunch breaks at the school was to eat it as slowly as he could. Leaving it behind was not an option - he'd done that once, and Aunt Petunia had shrieked at him in that unholy voice of hers, and he had sworn never to do anything like that again since it just was not worth it. _

_In front of him were two boys and two girls, both of them tucking into the food coming from their boxes. _

_Hunger alone spurned Harry to do what he did next, but firstly he took a good look around him, mentally willing the Power to let him go unseen and unnoticed like it did whenever Dudley and his gang were hunting him down - something he did absently; he had been using the Power to go unhidden for the last few weeks, and he found the peace was wonderful - and then he walked slowly over to the kids. _

_Without a word he knelt down near their bench and he stretched out his hand and made the arm slightly longer, and slowly he extended his hand into the lunchbox of one of the girls, and he snagged a small chocolate bar. He pulled back his hand and dropped the chocolate bar on the ground, and he extended his hand again slowly into one of the boy's lunchboxes. He could see a couple of sandwiches, but he left them alone and focused instead on one of the oranges. Very slowly, he extended his lengthened arm and he wrapped his fingers around one of the oranges, and pulled it slowly out of the lunchbox - quickly when he noticed the boy lower his hand to plunge it into the box, just in time. Last but certainly not least, Harry went to another lunchbox and saw two small bags of grapes, and figured the other boy didn't need two, so he carefully sneaked the hand into the last lunchbox and deftly pulled the bag out - just in time when the second boy was about to reach for something in the lunchbox. _

_Picking up his booty when he figured he had more than enough to eat, for now, Harry turned around and walked away, returning his arm to its previous length, ignoring the kids he'd just left behind who were accusing each other and anyone around them for the theft for their lunches. _

_Hiding away so no-one can see him, Harry tucked in to eat his impromptu meal, staring at the bag of grapes and the orange which, not two minutes ago, had been in the lunch boxes of some of his peers. He was already halfway eating the chocolate bar, letting his teeth crunch some of the biscuits before he swallowed before he reached for the orange and slowly unpeeled it, lifting his hand up to lick off the juice that spilt on his fingers before he broke the two halves apart and ate the segments one by one. _

_Harry knew if the Dursleys ever found out about this they would both punish him and say they had known he would come down to this, that they knew he would grow up to become a criminal, or some other rubbish like that - Marge was prone to making loud comments about how he was a mongrel. But he didn't care. _

_As he ate his orange segments one at a time Harry remembered how his heart had raced as he had slowly reached out to take the food out of the boxes and brought them over here. After a few moments of wrangling with his conscience, Harry decided he had done the right thing - he had been hungry and he had seen some food, and he had taken it - putting himself above them. He knew one other thing. _

_He wanted to commit theft again._

* * *

Once he was finished putting everything in the bag, Rag-Doll clipped it shut as he prepared to make his way back to the roof so he could drop off one sack near the broomstick before he went to the other jewellery shops in the centre to burgle them as well. Throwing the bag through the ventilation hole like a basketball player throwing the ball high into the air where it would fall through the basket, Rag-Doll crouched his knees down and leapt into the air after pushing some of his magic into the muscles to make them more springy than usual but remembering the cameras that were still on in the shop, Rag-Doll made his leap as normal looking or as 'muggle-like' as he could so he could get back into the ventilation shaft and he headed back to the rooftop where he'd left his broomstick. It only took him a few minutes to get back. After he dropped off the first bag of loot on the ground near the broomstick, Rag-Doll dashed over the rooftop, switching off several of the cameras wandlessly as he made his limbs as rubber-like as possible to give him more spring to his step, not wanting the muggles to see what he was doing since it might make them think he was something… unusual, or abnormal.

He knew several in the muggle governments worldwide knew about the magical world or had some vague knowledge of the existence of magic in vernal - the knowledge varied from one muggle community to the next; some like in Japan, China, India or America didn't know about the existence of magic anyway. They had locked themselves away with more creative protection than what existed in Britain, but the protections wouldn't make a difference if muggles knew about magic, and they would if he suddenly showed off.

Harry was a big believer in the Statute of Secrecy because of his childhood and what he had seen over the years of muggle-borns. He had grown up in a house full of intolerant muggles who hated and feared him, who had tried to have his powers exorcised, and he had needed to terrify them into leaving him alone (he would _**not**_ think about that mess Dobby had caused in the summer before his second year - it took him a good half an hour to make the Dursleys back off, but his view of muggle attitudes towards magic did not change as time passed. He did not want to be the cause behind a war between magic and non-magic, which would happen if the muggles realised a wizard was behind the Rag-Doll thefts.

Anyway, it took Rag-Doll a few minutes to come to another ventilation shaft, and he was soon back crawling through the shafts, corkscrewing himself through the narrow recesses and pushing through with his feet.

* * *

_His baggy, oversized clothes cloaking his small form as he looked at the house from the other side of the street, Harry couldn't help but wonder if he were in the middle of some kind of dream. _

_He couldn't believe he was doing this, but after committing a few basic thefts with a bit of flexible sleight of hand and more than a fair amount of luck, he was about to commit his first burglary. _

_Those basic thefts had started small; some food and water, orange juice nicked from lunch boxes at the school. Always in small amounts without being seen because the Dursleys, if they ever heard what was happening which was doubtful because at school people nicked food from others all the time, would probably say he was doing it out of some petty spite towards him. With those thefts, taking things which were more valuable was the next logical step. He had begun stealing small amounts of cash from the Dursleys - Dudley was the easiest; he was a pig, and his rooms looked it. Stealing cash from him was easy, so long as it was only a coin or two. Aunt Petunia was slightly more careful than her son, but not by much. He had only stolen a few coins off of her, but never any notes because she would likely miss them. _

_Uncle Vernon was the hardest Dursley to steal from directly if you wanted to go for his wallet and to be frank, it was pathetically easy if you wanted to pick his pocket - Vernon kept his wallet in the back pocket of his trousers. Always. Harry knew he could pick the man's pocket at any time, and he had with using the Power to make Vernon think nothing was amiss, that he had a certain number of notes stored in the wallet when in fact Harry was the one who had them the whole time. _

_But Harry had a way of getting more cash out of Vernon without needing to use his power. When Vernon sat down in his chair in the living room, some of the coins would drop into the seams where they were within easy reach. But that was small fry compared to what was out there. Finding the inspiration to become a burglar was not hard if you had access to a good library, and access to a kid's book titled Burglar Bill (okay, granted - some of the things in THAT story seemed unrealistic to him, but the basics seemed authentic enough and besides, that was what burglars did, right? The broke in and nicked whatever took their fancy). Once he had read the book five times to get the idea firmly placed in his head, Harry had made his mind up. _

_He was going to commit a burglary. _

_But he had two problems - one, who was he going to burgle, and two, would he be able to get away with it because of his distinctive appearance?_

_In the end, he had decided to burgle someone much further away from Privet Drive by only a couple of streets, and as for his appearance, there was little he could do about that. He decided to simply use the Power to hide and to stop the homeowners from noticing him. _

_Taking a deep breath Harry walked over to the house, simultaneously unlocking the door and using the Power to hide himself, and he slowly peeked his head around the door listening for any sounds before he stepped inside when he heard the sounds of laughter from the living room and guessed the family was there, watching TV. Harry smiled softly to himself and he sneaked upstairs to find the bedroom. _

_From the look of it, it was a family of three when he found the bedroom of a girl. Harry looked around the room from his position in the doorway, mentally guessing her age - there were movie posters and there was a number of makeup products on the vanity table, and he guessed she was in her teens or something. It didn't matter that much to him, and he held up his hand, mentally willing the money in the room to come to him while also summoning any jewellery. _

_Floating up as if they had been rendered weightless like astronauts in the vacuum of space, a small collection of rings and bracelets floated towards him and he shoved them into his pockets with a single hand before he grabbed a few notes and coins. Harry left the bedroom, knowing he'd collected everything from this bedroom and now he moved onto his second target. _

_When he was finished and he was leaving the house, he closed the door silently and relocked it to make the homeowners think nothing was amiss before he headed back to Number 4. Harry had left the Dursleys when they were asleep and he hoped they still were by the time he returned, but as he went back while using the Power to mask himself, he thought about the weight of the jewellery and money he'd stolen from that house. _

_It felt good, but as he walked away he could almost hear the screams for the jewellery to be returned to its rightful owners. _

_Yeah, like that was ever going to happen._

* * *

Rag-Doll smirked as he finished bagging up the last of the jewellery in the last shop of the Churchill Centre, and he paused to briefly admire the sparkle of the diamonds in the moonlight from the overhead windows before he dropped the piece of jewellery in his bag before he made his way over to the vent. He paused as he glanced at the door that was placed in a corner to make it unnoticeable to the public. He knew the door would lead to offices, storerooms, even a canteen perhaps. But the office would have money, perhaps and it wouldn't be difficult to crawl through the ventilation shafts to find out if the office had a safe full of money, but he decided against it.

During the course of his long criminal career, Rag-Doll had learnt the hard way to stick to a plan and he hadn't reached where he was now by complicating his plans or his heists - he always committed an in and out job. He hadn't needed to do anything more than to cast basic tracking charms on certain parts of the shopping mall which made it easy for him to reach without going through all the palaver of crawling through the shafts for hours on end and attracting attention. And in any case, he had known the jewellery would have been here in the shops at night since the security system of alarms and shutters was enough to deter ordinary muggle burglars. He didn't even know if there was a safe holding money here and he wasn't going to look.

Still, he couldn't help but feel some regret when he corkscrewed back through the shafts on his way back to the roof.

* * *

_Walking out of The Leaky Cauldron with a smile on his face, Harry couldn't help but be happy with how things had turned out. Okay, finding out the truth about the Power which had been a part of his life for a long time was hard to take, but Harry was delighted it was something so simple. _

_Magic. _

_He was a wizard. _

_A real wizard. _

_But what he wasn't happy about were the implications the Dursleys had known the whole time he was magical, and instead of either treating him neutrally or like he was a person with thoughts and feelings of his own, they had treated him like a monster. _

_On second thought, Harry was glad they had treated him the way they had otherwise he would never have become a burglar. He had committed a number of other thefts since the first one, and he had the perfect alibi because the Dursleys believed he was under lock and key, and he couldn't give up that life even if he wanted to, which he didn't. _

_He had just had a very interesting meeting with the goblins - he had felt that Hagrid had glossed over his meeting with the goblins, and he wanted to know if that vault he had taken that money to pay for his things was the only one. The goblins had told him it wasn't but after a bit of explaining they had told him Albus Dumbledore was overseeing his vault's activity and that included the monthly balance reports. Harry had taken great joy in telling the goblins about not having received any mail from them or indeed anyone else. To say they were not happy was an understatement, but Harry had asked if there were any other ways for the magical world to communicate without it being so obvious. They had arranged for him to be set up with a kind of box which would teleport letters from them to him. Not only would he have a means of communication that could not be monitored, but he could also make plans without Dumbledore knowing about them. _

_Win-Win. _

_But Dumbledore…_

_Harry didn't like the thought of someone in the shadows, monitoring and controlling his mail - he had no idea how the old wizard would justify it if he was confronted, but Harry decided it wasn't going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime, he would use the personal vault of his mother for several of his activities, like storing anything he stole that he couldn't get rid of in the muggle world. _

_But for now, Harry was just going to enjoy his freedom. He had spent the last few hours buying several books, and things Hagrid had tried to keep him away from, like that trunk with more versatile properties than the one Hagrid had made him buy, and he had plans to explore the rest of the alley to see what it could offer, but after a bit of consultation from the goblins he had learnt of several magical arts to keep him safe from interference. _

_For now, he had a lot of work to do, in both worlds. He had to study magical customs because he didn't want to go in there blind as a fuckin' bat, and he also wanted to develop his repertoire in the muggle world. _

_Ah, Harry sighed to himself, so much to do, so little time…_

* * *

Rag-Doll was safely out of the ventilation shafts and was now racing over the roof, his feet padding on the ground while he went back for his broomstick while making sure he had everything he'd stolen out of the jewellery shops down in the centre. He had just poked a wasps' nest with this recent three-way heist, but he had other burglaries in the works that would be simple to pull off.

Re-casting the notice-me-not charms, Rag-Doll picked up the broomstick and took off again…

* * *

_Harry sat brooding in his cell in Azkaban, trying hard to keep the effects of the Dementor's from affecting his mind; ever since he had discovered the existence of this horrible place was, he had worked hard to improve his knowledge at Occlumency. He'd had plenty of practice ever since he had learnt several witches and wizards had the power to push their magic into the minds of others, Snape and Dumbledore among them, though Voldemort was said to be even worse and Harry believed it. _

_Leaning his head back, shivering involuntarily when he felt the cold, slimy wall, but he quickly got used to it, Harry thought about his time at Hogwarts - it was the only way he could actually put the pieces together to reach his current predicament. _

_When he had gone to Hogwarts, Harry had been sorted into Gryffindor house, though something was definitely wrong - the Sorting Hat had been apologetic about the sorting, though Harry didn't know why. However, he still needed to be careful. Safely away from Dudley's influence, Harry had the opportunity to rank in the Top 20 students of the school, but he had gone out of his way to keep his education to a certain level to not attract any attention from Dumbledore, who seemed to have an unhealthy interest in his life, and it didn't take long before he realised the house was far from friendly, so no change there. _

_Many of the students in Gryffindor were into themselves, spouting off Dumbledore's propaganda, and they weren't particularly loyal to their peers. In a way, the Gryffindors were the magical version of the Dursleys. They liked things a certain way, they had such a black and white image of the universe, and it was strictly white, and if you showed signs of black or grey, then you would be instantly ostracised. Even worse, the House had a Head in the shape of Minerva McGonagall who constantly made excuses and didn't seem to give two thoughts about supporting her students even though she presented the image she did. _

_His first year… full of weird danger surrounding the Philosopher's Stone. _

_Harry had read the article in the Daily Prophet concerning an attempted break-in at Gringotts, the Vault which held that grubby little package Hagrid had taken out, on Dumbledore's orders. _

_Leaning his head back even more, ignoring what felt like oil which was settling into his hair, Harry remembered his own curiosity about that package, easily wondering what it could be if the Flamels, though he had not known anything about them at the time, would need such tight defences on the vault when his own vault simply required an ordinary key. _

_Harry frowned when he remembered that unfair detention for something he hadn't even deserved. Harry had tried to tell McGonagall about it even though his instincts told him he was wasting his time and making a mistake, but the bitch hadn't listened to him which would be the first of many instances during his time at the school. She had just said he deserved the detention and refused to listen to anything else he had to say. _

_Harry had ended up in the Forbidden Forest, of all places - if that wasn't a clear Dumbledore manipulation, Harry would snap his own neck without using his metamorphamagus powers (he had discovered the name of what he could do in his first year). _

_Finding that version of Voldemort drinking unicorn blood had been frightening, but he'd managed to deal with it, just like he had managed to survive those ridiculously easy tests in that trap Dumbledore and the other teachers had set up (another blatant manipulation from the old fool since if Dumbledore had really wanted to hide something like the stone, he would have kept it under lock and key at Gringotts), but at the time Harry had no idea what Dumbledore's motives were. _

_He hadn't bothered going back to the Dursleys. He had managed to slip out of the country on a nice long holiday, far from Dumbledore's grubby influence with a nice little visa allowing him to passage to other magical countries, and he had picked up quite a bit from all of them before returning to Britain. _

_Dumbledore may not have been able to find him, but Dobby the House Elf did. The little elf had thought that the rather pathetic methods - keeping mail from him, trying to block the barrier at Platform Nine and Three quarters would stop him going to Hogwarts though he'd found a way around that and get to the school for the year. While the House-elf had been annoying, Harry had to admit the diminutive creatures' heart was in the right place. _

_Things didn't improve at Hogwarts, and he was really starting to wonder if that boast about the school is the best in the world was told by someone trying to make a quick buck. Well, the Defence teacher of that year certainly seemed to love making a quick buck thanks to those stupid books he'd written. _

_The moment he had met Gilderoy Lockhart he had immediately seen the man for the con-artist he was. Harry had spent his holiday looking into various criminal organisations around the world, from the Tong to the Yakuza so he could pick up contacts and even new skills. His efforts hadn't been in vain - he had found two Japanese cat burglars who, literally, were cat burglars. They were a pair of magical twins with cat animagus forms, and they used their forms to creep into places, among other methods, and they used their forms to hide their loot. They had also introduced him to a couple of con-artists of their acquaintance, and while he was a long way off knowing any major players in that field, you'd have to be blind to not recognise Lockhart for what he really was. _

_As he sat back as he reflected on his second year, trying to block out the taunts from the other cells - the inmates knew he was here by now, and they loved the knowledge the fabled Boy-Who-Lived was in Azkaban for murder - Harry mused about his second year, already knowing that the year was the one where he really saw just how blind the magical world was. _

_Firstly, they had a Defence teacher who couldn't teach his way out of a paper bag, embellishing every single thing he had claimed to have done, and virtually everyone had believed the ponce. _

_But that year… it had not been one of the best he'd ever had. _

_Harry still could not work out what Lucius Malfoy's long-term plan was for the diary, though considering the bastard had only unleashed it on the school out of petty spite against the Weasley family, it probably wasn't much. But those voices he'd heard in the pipe network of the castle had definitely been spooky on top of those attacks. _

_He hadn't known Parseltongue was considered evil and dark. Oh, he had discovered he could speak to snakes during that visit to the zoo, but he had moved on when he had noticed Piers and Dudley moving over to the snake enclosure, but he hadn't bothered to look too deeply into it, he had just considered it to be a normal magical language. How wrong he was. _

_There was plenty of blame to go around - Snape for giving Malfoy the incantation (he had looked it up - it was a fourth-year spell) to make him look stupid, Malfoy for conjuring the snake in the first place, and lastly Lockhart for once more trying (unsuccessfully) to latch on to the Boy-Who-Lived fame by trying to get rid of the snake, but the fool had only pissed it off and it went in the direction of one of the Hufflepuffs. _

_Harry closed his eyes as he remembered the outcry and how everyone had thought he was evil simply because he could speak to a snake, and he had been virtually isolated by everyone; he remembered that time where Nearly Headless Nick and Justin had been found petrified, and McGonagall had escorted him to Dumbledore's office. He saw in his Head of Houses' eyes that she believed he was guilty. Like everyone else, she was prepared to think the worst of him without looking for proof. Stupid bitch. _

_He remembered what he had said to her before he had gone to see the head bastard; _

"_**You think I did it, right? Well, you're just like that bitch Petunia. Here's a question for you - if you can't be bothered to be a decent House Head, why not resign? It's not like you've done anything for us, right?"**_

_The look in McGonagall's eyes had been priceless, and he saw there and then she knew what his living conditions were like, but he had walked away from her. _

_In the end, Harry had sworn a magically binding oath to silence everyone, though one or two people seemed to think he was still guilty and was just pretended to swear the oath. _

_In the aftermath of Dumbledore's sacking from the school - another sign of Malfoy's pettiness - there were several more attacks, but by then Harry had thrown himself into the investigation, and he had worked out enough to find out the cold voice he'd been hearing for the whole year was a snake, a basilisk. He had fought the giant creature, but he'd also discovered more about Lord Voldemort thanks to a shade of the Dark Lord. _

_Unknown the school staff, Harry had sold the basilisk carcass and some of the shed skin from the snake to the goblins who had rendered it up and he had received a nice amount of gold bullion which he could move around the muggle world for a nice profit. _

_Dumbledore once more tried to get him to return to the Dursleys, but Harry had ignored him and refused, and after he had managed to dispel the Tracking charms on the things he had left Britain once more as he travelled the world to learn more about magic. This time he had gone for India and other Asian countries where he could learn more about Parseltongue. When he returned any hope of finding a nice, quiet year at Hogwarts was blasted out of the window when he learnt Sirius Black had escaped Azkaban and was looking for him. _

_And naturally, no-one thought to tell him why. He'd needed to discover the truth for himself. Harry had been thirteen years old at the time, did they really think he was still a child?_

_Finding out he had a godfather was certainly hard to take because it had honestly never occurred to him to look. It had also not occurred to the Ministry to think about the consequences of what could happen if the Dementors performed their infamous kiss, but after feeling their effects a few times without the teachers or the Ministry doing anything to stop the disgusting demons from looking for Black, Harry had written a scathing letter to the ICW which essentially meant going behind Fudge and Dumbledore's backs, but he hadn't cared. _

_Oooh, the reaction of the ICW had given him hope there were wizards and witches out there who had a few brain cells, and they had. They had ripped Fudge's precious administration to pieces until it was a shadow of its former self, and finally, Fudge was forced to send the Dementors back to their cage in Azkaban. Dumbledore hadn't gotten off lightly either - he had the influence and the power to make sure Fudge didn't do something as stupid as sending Dementors who were unsupervised and capable of practically anything to a school full of children who were the latest generation of witches and wizards, but he hadn't used that power and while he ruled the ICW, even Dumbledore was not above it._

_Harry had worked out he wasn't popular with them, but he hadn't cared, especially when he had discovered the truth about his parents' deaths. Finding out they'd been betrayed was sick in itself, but finding out the magical world had just shoved an innocent man in Azkaban was disgusting. _

_**Ironic, isn't it? **__Harry mused to himself as he looked around the cell. __**The magical world never learns from its mistakes, but how long will it be before they make one they will find very hard to wriggle out of? **_

_Speaking of which…_

_Harry stood up and walked softly over to the bars to examine them. The wizards were unimaginative about the security of their cells - they preferred the Dementors to keep the inmates in check - but the bars of the cells were a good space apart. For a normal wizard or witch, they would not be able to squeeze past, but Harry was not a normal wizard. Taking a few deep breaths to concentrate, relying on his occlumency training to keep the effects of the Dementors' negativity out of his concentration, Harry pushed his hand, his wrist, and then his arm through the gap between two bars, and with his metamorphic powers he transformed his bones and skin into a more rubbery form, and then squeezed his way past. Harry kept his eyes closed, particularly when he felt the rust of the bars scrape his cheek, but he was through. _

_Once he was out of his cell, he glanced back in his cell, but he quickly turned around and walked away. Harry had no idea how long it would be before the Ministry discovered he'd escaped, but hopefully, he would find his way to the coast where he had his house where he could get access to his second wand before they managed to track him down. _

_As silently as he could, Harry moved past the cells. Occasionally one or two of the inmates noticed him, but they were so out of it thanks to their own exposure to the Dementors in the prison they either didn't register his presence or they thought he was a figment of their imagination. Though once or twice, a few of them screamed his name, no-one paid them much mind. _

_Getting out of Azkaban was childishly simple. There were a few wizards who had wands and some kind of amulet which stopped the Dementors affecting them, but they were easy to avoid. In general, everyone assumed the Dementors would keep everyone inside. But once he was out, Harry took one look at the stormy ocean - he could see the ring around Azkaban where the wards of the prison island met the muggle world, so he guessed the waters surrounding the island were made deliberately stormy to make it hard for prisoners to think about escape. _

_It didn't matter. _

_After spotting the jetty where he'd been brought to the island on a boat, Harry raced towards it, mentally focusing on his metamorphamagus powers to take in a large quantity of air into his lungs, and he raced across the rotten wood with near rubbery legs and he dove into the sea when he reached the edge, preparing himself for the cold of the sea. _

_It was freezing, but he forced himself to swim straight ahead towards land. He swam slowly but surely, wanting to conserve the air he had in his lungs while he dove down to avoid the swell of the surface. _

_When he felt the brief tingle which was the wards around Azkaban, Harry swam back to the surface and took a deep breath, but he didn't have time to rest since he was still too close to the prison for comfort. And he began to swim again, ignoring the burning he was feeling in his chest, legs and arms. _

_Harry slowly broke the surface of the sea near the beach, the top of his head reminiscent of a crocodile closing in only this crocodile just wanted to escape. After leaving the beach, ignoring the sharp stones lying everywhere though he knew they were slicing into the exposed flesh of his feet, Harry left the beach and began looking for for a way out. He could see sand dunes with green stalks of grass rising from it, and he walked towards it, wincing occasionally when his feet brushed against sharp stones. _

_When he was finally walking on the sand and feeling the grass brushing or scratching his legs, Harry dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands and let himself rest for a bit before he got moving, though he knew he would need to move soon; he had no idea how long it would be before a muggle or a group of muggles found him, and if they saw how he was dressed there was no telling what would happen next. _

_But he needed to take a breather, even with his abilities he was knackered. _

_All in all his third year had been, for all its ups and downs, the best year he'd had at the school. Sure, he'd earned the ire of the Ministry for going behind their backs and making them look collectively like fools, but that was their own fault. Still, he'd managed to save his so-called godfather and learnt a bit more about his parents, but nothing else. _

_His fourth year…_

_Harry sighed as he thought about his most recent and most disastrous year at Hogwarts. He had spent the last few years learning how to practice magic underneath the noses of Dumbledore, McGonagall, Voldemort, Snape, and Dumbledore's spies Ron and Hermione so he could get his OWLs and his NEWTs and then leave the magical world behind, but his fourth year put paid to that idea. _

_Having his name drawn out of the stupid Goblet of Fire had been a disaster in itself, but then the entire year had gone to shit. Everyone believed he had put his name in the Goblet, but instead of swearing a magical oath Harry had used the time to continue with his studies without attending any of the classes - what would be the point? No-one had learnt from the mistakes from second-year so why bother a second time? He had worked hard, trained hard. He had survived the Hungarian Horntail after stumbling by accident on the dragons in the Forbidden Forest (why Dumbledore and the other teachers didn't put some kind of fence around the forest, he did not know since it contradicted the rule for students not to go in), and he had adopted a strategy to deal with the problem. _

_It was a miracle dragons spoke parseltongue. _

_Sure, doing so cemented in people's minds he was a Dark Lord in training, but Harry didn't care._

_He had avoided the Yule Ball and he hadn't cared one iota about making Hogwarts look bad since the school had been trying to kill him for two long years, so why should he care? _

_The Second Task was a problem, but only because he had stolen veritaserum from Snape's hoard of potions with the help of Dobby, and he had used it on Cedric Diggory to get some insights. Cheating was a tradition in the tournament and realistically the others - Delacour, Diggory, and Krum were all older than he was, so he needed an advantage. He had then wiped Diggory's memory of the incident so then no-one knew, and the truth potion was returned to the cupboard as though it hadn't been removed. Win-Win. _

_A sigh escaped from his weary chest that was both muffled and audible from his current posture. Surviving the second task hadn't been difficult either when he had discovered Gillyweed which allowed him to breathe underwater (sure, it gave him problems with Snape, but since he had stolen the weed from the apothecary in Hogsmeade there was no problem) and he had gone down to rescue what he would miss most. He had left Ronald Weasley down in the Merpeople village, and after a fight and a half with the Merpeople, he had managed to rescue Gabrielle Delacour when it was clear the girls' champion sister was not going to turn up. He didn't understand what was going through everyone's minds at the time that he would miss Weasley, but still he'd taken part and he hadn't given a thought about what it would do for the tournament though he had told Mr and Mrs Delacour off for letting their little girl go down there, which had resulted in a blow-up aimed by Maxime and Dumbledore. _

_Oh, it was sometimes so good to be able to cause problems. _

_However, the third task was the worst. _

_Lord Voldemort had returned and he had used Harry's blood to bring him back. But, looking back, Harry could not understand why Voldemort had forced him to go through the tournament in the first place since so many things could have gone wrong, and he guessed whatever Riddle had done to himself over the years had also addled the man's brain. _

_Harry had used his contortionist skills to escape the gravestone Wormtail had used to trap him, and he had fought Voldemort one on one, using explosive hexes and all kinds of curses a regular little Light Wizard would never really use, surprising Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and he had killed Voldemort's massive snake when the creature had tried to bite him. Harry frowned into his hands as he recalled how there was a bizarre, high-pitched scream which rose with a black mist from the snake's dead body, and how Voldemort had bellowed with rage at the sight of his dead familiar. _

_Harry had been prepared for a new stage of the fight, but he had been hit in the hack with a spell. Voldemort had then approached him, and Harry remembered thinking that he was going to die at that moment, but Voldemort had been more malicious than that. Back then Harry had been too full of adrenaline to really think, but now he knew why Voldemort had done what he had. _

_The Dark Lord had just returned and in order to get ready for the next stage in his campaign on the magical world, it would be best if something cataclysmic occurred in the meantime. Voldemort had placed a spell on the cup, a spell which would kill hundreds of people if someone touched it, and he had cast a mild compulsion charm on it which would attract someone's attention, making them touch it and the curse would be released. _

_Voldemort sent him back to Hogwarts with Diggory's body and his wand which had the Killing curse recorded in it among other things, and Voldemort made sure Diggory's body was hit with the same curses Harry had used on him and his followers. _

_The curse on the cup was the icing on the cake. _

_Harry had no idea how many people had died when the cup was touched but he knew many had died, including students. He was given a trial, unlike Sirius Black, but it was a farce. He hadn't been allowed to testify, give evidence, nothing. He was guilty of mass murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban while everything his family had was taken from him, and he was just relieved he had gotten a vault in a different name otherwise that would have been taken from him as well. Harry remembered how all the Gryffindors including his supposed friends testified against him, spilling lies and innuendo. Sirius had spat at him and called him a little Pettigrew while he hadn't seen Lupin, and he didn't know what the werewolf's thoughts on the matter were, but since Lupin had never bothered with him in the past it wasn't something he thought of. _

_Harry closed his eyes as he thought about his fucked-up godfather, and he couldn't believe Sirius had believed he would commit mass murder. How could he find a curse like that? Why would he cast it and then return to the school and just let himself be accused? Did IQs for witches and wizards drop or something? _

_What insulted him the most was that Black __**KNEW **__how it felt to be framed, and yet ironically he believed the worst in his own godson. Now Harry simply didn't care. He lifted his head and blinked in the sudden harsh light of the sun. He had no idea how long he had been in Azkaban for, but he guessed it was a day or so. He was just relieved no-one in the graveyard had known about his metamorphamagus powers, and he had been able to use them to escape his bonds, never mind the cell. _

_Harry sighed and stood up, brushing the sand from his robes out of habit more than anything else, and he walked off. _

Arriving back at his hotel room, Harry silently tiptoed through the bedroom and placed the broomstick on the bed while he stripped out of his clothes and replaced them with his dressing gown, and he went to the bathroom to wash his face and get ready for bed. As he brushed his teeth, he could feel the fatigue set in and he knew he would be able to sleep without needing to take any Dreamless sleep potion to kill any nightmares he might have.

When he was finished, Harry walked back to the bedroom and shrank the broomstick and placed it inside a matchbox which he placed inside his travel bag, and he picked up the bags of jewellery he'd taken from the burglaries and popped them in the bag. He would spend the next couple of days sending them off the PO Box he had in Kent, and he would work out where to take them from there.

He had the Laines of Brighton to do next, there were jewellery shops stacked up against one another which would be easy to get into, but he wanted time to enjoy himself.

When he was finished hiding the jewellery bags and placing muggle repelling charms on them all, Harry turned off the lights and crawled into the bed.

_It had been a good night,_ he reflected himself, _but it was only going to get better…_

_It only took the magical world only a measly two years to realise he was innocent, but by then he was out of the magical world and he was in the muggle world, studying at a secondary school he had managed to get into (it hadn't been easy, but it hadn't been too difficult either). Harry had been right - Voldemort had needed time to prepare, to reorganise and to recruit new Death Eaters to his cause. _

_Dumbledore and the Ministry were alerted to an attack on Azkaban, one of many attacks Voldemort had arranged, and to their surprise, they found Voldemort in person leading the assault on Azkaban where everyone assumed he would finally kill Harry Potter, or turn him into a Death Eater. They were surprised when they discovered Harry was actually innocent of the mass murder two hundred people, but everyone, including Voldemort, were shocked when it was revealed the Boy-Who-Lived was not in the prison. He had escaped. _

_After that there was a massive manhunt and the muggle world were given a cover story that an escaped prisoner called Harry Potter had broken out, and he was wanted for questioning (that particular news had made Harry briefly think about the Dursleys, but he had quickly pushed that aside; for years the Dursleys had made him out to be a criminal, and by seeing that they were probably vindicated or going on about what their precious neighbours would think). _

_Harry wasn't frightened of the magical world finding him since he'd had the time to hide. Once he had left Azkaban, he had made his way down south to where his windmill in Kent was, and he changed his appearance to fit in with the Harry Frost identity he had made for himself - he had not seen the point in hiding his first name, which was fairly common in both worlds, the Frost came from the RD Wingfield novels of an old police inspector who hated paperwork more than anything else. _

_Harry had purchased the mill and took it for his house shortly after getting hold of the money from the basilisk. Hiding it from Dumbledore was easy since the old wizard didn't know about his activities, and there were several wards on the mill to stop people from tracking him down and for defending him. _

_He had deliberately ignored the manhunt for him, and he had also ignored the signs of Lord Voldemort's little war while he went to his life as a professional jewel thief and a student at a secondary school so he could gain a good education in both worlds while he hid from everyone. _

_But he hadn't been idle; between his burglaries and going into places like Hastings, London, and even as far north as Manchester and Leeds to find criminals to learn from, Harry had also been keeping up with magic, and he had also been preparing himself for the day he'd have to deal with Voldemort and Dumbledore and Fudge. _

_There was no way he was going to let any of them get away with anything they had done. He didn't bother sending anything off after he'd left the prison - he wanted them to continue thinking he was still inside Azkaban, that way they wouldn't try to hunt him down. By leaving the prison and slipping out so silently and not doing anything, Harry had the time he needed to work on his plans. He knew one day someone, either an Auror paying more attention than ordinary, or perhaps Dumbledore, or maybe even Voldemort himself would find out he had left the stinking cell in Azkaban. He was just amazed by how long it had taken them to find out he was gone, and it made him think the guards just threw food and drink into the cells and didn't bother cleaning up. _

_No matter. It meant nothing to him now. The moment he was revealed being out of Azkaban, Harry immediately sent memories to the ICW and other media outlets in the magical world to let them know what had happened from his perspective. It wasn't long before Fudge was kicked out of office for all kinds of offences after a lengthy investigation by the ICW why the Minister himself had taken great pains and great pleasure in virtually destroying the life of a fourteen-year-old wizard. _

_Dumbledore also suffered by losing his precious position while the memories revealed he had deliberately sent said fourteen-year-old wizard back to the Dursleys and kept trying to send him back even though they were abusive, and he knew it. In the meantime, Harry had gone to the goblins to ask for their help in ridding the world of Lord Voldemort since his scar had been playing up and he wanted it checked upon. _

_The goblins removed the soul fragment from his scar and they used it to suck all of the soul fragments and the magic of the Dark Lord and his followers to Gringotts which transformed them into Squibs while Voldemort's body was reduced to a pile of dust. _

_While going to the MACUSA where he could at last sit his OWLs and his NEWTs, Harry began suing the magical world of Great Britain for what they had done to him, and he had not gifted the courtroom with his appearance since he didn't want to give them opportunities he didn't want to hand out. Harry received a few letters from his 'friends', his 'godfather' and Dumbledore, but he had refused to reply to them since they meant nothing to him anymore. _

_He was free._

* * *

Arriving at his windmill, Harry looked up at the place with a fond smile; sure, while it would have been nice moving into Potter Manor, he hadn't been able to since the Diggory family had gotten hold of the property and stripped it bare. The Diggory's had destroyed so many irreplaceable heirlooms, something he had made sure the family paid for even to this day. He could understand their grief but destroying what an orphan had even if they blamed said orphan for the loss of their only child was just wrong.

They didn't think he deserved to have any ties to his family, but he had rendered them destitute to the point of them possessing only the clothes on their backs for taking what was rightfully his.

Harry pushed that to the back of his mind and he walked towards the door, slotting the key into the lock and stepped in.

* * *

_The dust from the opening made him cough and splutter slightly, and he waved his wand briefly to clear the air while he examined the opening. For an ordinary man, the opening he had just cut into the walls separating this shop with the jewellery shop next door would be considered too small, but for him, it was just right. _

_Sure, it might be wrong to advertise the fact he was a contortionist, but if there was one thing he learnt during those acting lessons he'd picked up on for something meaningful and creative to do, you needed to have an audience sometimes confused. _

_Concentrating hard on his form while he crouched down, Harry was able to contort himself in the right way to get through the little passage he'd created a few minutes ago. He stuck his arm through the opening and grabbed hold of something on the other side within the jewellery shop itself for some leverage, bending them back while he scrunched his body into a narrow ball and pushed himself in. _

_Once he was through, he uncoiled himself and stood up to his respectable height and clapped his hands as he took in the sight of the jewellery contained inside the cases. He smirked underneath his mask as he saw the glittering diamonds as they sat within the cases, highlighted by the lights inside. _

_It was time to begin. _

_Harry put down the newspaper with a smile on his face, though it was smile tinged with uncertainty. On the newspaper was a photo printed from a night-vision camera of a thief wearing baggy clothes which looked fairly ragged. The headline showed the media and indeed the police seemed to have caught onto the raggedy appearance because they had coined him 'Rag-Doll.' _

_While he was partly happy that his burglaries had garnered so much notice now since it was something he had done himself rather than something his parents had done for him, Harry wasn't sure if the name really suited him that well, but he decided to just let them call him by that name since he had no real interest in what they called him even if the name was fairly understandable since his clothes were raggedy, but he had chosen to wear them because of their comfort. _

_After preparing some tea while he cooked his dinner, Harry began cutting out the articles from several newspapers and placed them in a small plastic folder. He would take them upstairs and stick them in a scrapbook he'd bought. He had started enjoying being in his, well his 'Rag-Doll' identity since he had started out not so long ago that he wanted to remember and treasure the good old days always. He wanted to be old, sit in his armchair and drink something hot, and flick through the scrapbooks he filled with collected newspaper articles and pictures so he could refresh his memories of what it was like in the good old days where he was a burglar. _

_What else he would have in his future - whether he'd have children or be married or not, Harry had no idea, but he was a young man and he had plenty of time. _

_All in all, Rag-Doll's future seemed to be promising. _


	2. Chapter 2 Hollywood

I own nothing.

My first multichapter Harry Potter story in a long time, but I've decided to write the chapters as short stories.

Apologies in advance for fans of Lindsay Lohan; the views included are specifically written for Harry, please don't flame me for them. Please let me know what you think in general.

* * *

Rag-Doll.

_The house was on a single storey with an angular rooftop, making it look like a classical villa. The swimming pool was a rippling glowing blue mass in the back, bordered by bay windows. Moving like a silent shadow, a dark shape walked over to the bay windows, his legs and feet bouncing as though they were made from elastic. The limbs allowed him to virtually leap from one space to another, almost giving him spider-like agility merged with that of a deer. _

_And yet, he moved cautiously. Every movement he took was extremely well-timed and precise, borne of practiced movements so each time he moved from one spot to the other, he would pause, look around, and then move again before he repeated the pattern. _

_Clad head to toe in dark fabric that gave him a baggy appearance, the figure gently tried a single door to check if they were unlocked. __**Silly girl isn't as brainless as I'd thought, that or someone else did it for her, **_he thought to himself for a moment while he tried the lock again. _When he found it wouldn't budge, the figure muttered a curse under his breath and slipped something out of his pocket. It was a long ornately crafted stick. _

_The figure jabbed it at the lock, and with a click, it was unlocked._

* * *

Harry smirked as he remembered the burglary from the night before even as he gulped down the yawn he was feeling; it had been a busy night, and he was quite tired although while he had managed to get away with what he had done, it hadn't been a completely good night's work in his book, but as was his custom he had gotten up early. That was one of the drawbacks of living with the Dursleys, and he honestly doubted the effects of their abuse where they had forced him to get very little sleep would leave him, but it wasn't all bad; he had learnt how to get all the sleep that he could actually get, but it did sometimes leave him quite tired.

He didn't really need to remember the burglary that much, although the memory of it had been awoken by the newspaper story he was reading. As she read, he let his mind go back and 'see' the burglary again. Thanks to his occlumency skills, it was easy for him to slip back in his own mind.

* * *

_He had learnt a long time ago to always walk tip-toe partially so then no-one would be able to hear him, and since he usually wore padded Japanese style Tabi socks where the large toe was separated from the rest of the toes for extra freedom of movement, it was a bit like walking barefoot. Harry never really wore shoes to his burglaries; he had learnt that freedom of movement was key, and besides that, the shoes would often be made from something that didn't really help his contortionist abilities. The fabric was the best thing he needed to wear, and as long as he made sure the fabric was high quality so it didn't leave behind too much evidence, all the best. _

_As he padded around the house, keeping his wand in front of him while he let his eyes move around and survey everything around him and a sneer twisted his lips. _

_Lindsay Lohan was not his favourite actress; some of the movie clips he had seen her in had shown a young woman who was good at what she had done, but her downward spiral into rehab was so boring, he was amazed by how mundane people were for being interested in such things. He didn't care if the actress lived or died personally, he was more interested in what she had in her home. Ignoring the stench of booze which contrasted sharply with just how neat the place was, Rag-Doll tip-toed up the stairs, keeping his wand firmly in his grasp and remembering the nightmare he'd had with the MACUSA just so he would have access to it. _

_He supposed he could see it from their points of view, of course - after nearly being revealed thanks to Grindelwald back in the 1920s when the muggles had nearly discovered them, on top of their already turbulent relationship with muggles after one of their own made the stupid mistake by revealing magic to a muggle who not only knew about magic but had then proceeded to create a nightmare for the MACUSA. Rag-Doll did not want to get on the wrong side of the American magical community, who would be even more unmerciful towards him than the British ministry; yeah, they had lost a lot of their harshness over the years, though in the past if he so much as lit up his wand in a non-magical area, he would be lucky to not spend the rest of his life in prison faster than you could blink, but like many other communities which practiced magic around the world, the Americans, unlike many other countries in Europe, were far more cautious and they did not ignore the dangers. He had learnt that although magic in front of muggles was forbidden, it was allowed in non-magical areas so long as there were no muggles watching. How they were able to tell the difference worldwide, he still had no idea, but he imagined there was some kind of sensor net around the world which made them perform the task with ease. That was easy enough, but while it had cost him a bit of money once he had gotten his visitors visa to America, Harry had also discovered that although they had the power, the MACUSA would not alert Dumbledore to his presence in America. _

_Harry wasn't bothered by that; like all wizards, he relied on his wand to protect him, but he didn't need his magic for everything, thanks to his contortionist abilities, combined with his mastery of karate and Thai boxing, he was more than capable of holding his own in a fight. He had learnt martial arts as soon as he could, and he had mastered them all with ease thanks to how flexible his body could be. Still, he wasn't expecting to trouble from anyone in Hollywood which would reveal he was here. _

* * *

If you ever wanted to burgle a place full of celebrities and actors and actresses, go to Hollywood.

Seriously, it was so easy.

Forget banks.

Forget jewellery stores.

Forget all the other high-risk targets.

Just go for a nice few easy burglaries where A-List celebrities live in numbers not seen _**anywhere else. **_It was so easy; just find a celebrity you wanted to burgle, case the joint a bit, work out when they would be either in or out, break-in, look around and then get out again with whatever you could find that you thought would fetch a nice price, and then hold onto it for a few months before you sold it…and just relax and enjoy what Hollywood and LA had to offer.

Harry had longed to burgle Hollywood for years. How hard could it be? You simply travel across the Atlantic, fly over America (or else you could just simply spend a few months in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and then go to Hollywood where you break into as many celebs as you like?) and just break into homes while their owners weren't even there.

Hollywood was perfect; with so many actors and actresses spending their time in bars and clubs and restaurants it was pathetically easy for him to break in.

Harry had been in Hollywood for two weeks now, and he had already burgled far more people than the bloody Bling-Ring, as the tabloid press had termed the gang of teenage idiots, who had made so many mistakes, it was not funny.

He had even attended the trials, and he had watched on in contempt for all of them. They were not burglars. They were fools. They deserved to be in prison for messing up, all because they had just wanted fame and fortune.

Harry snorted. Fame and fortune?

He had had both in the magical world, and look what had happened there; the bastard Dumbledore and the fucking Ministry under Fudge had taken the lot. At least in the muggle world, he was basically unknown.

Harry pushed the Bling-Ring and the memories of what Fudge and Dumbledore had done out of his mind, and he reflected on the ease it took for him to get the potions to their recipients. It was perfectly illegal, which suited him just fine, but it worked even better. Mostly. Sometimes he had needed to rely on specially programmed potions designed to compel the muggles to leave their homes, and then go out and leave their homes unattended.

Harry might have hated Snape even if the man had been a genius and a powerful wizard, the only thing that put him off was just how off-putting the greasy bastard was with his attitude, but truthfully brewing potions was easy when you had a better teacher who taught you in a more patient manner. It still made Harry wonder about Dumbledore; alright, hiring Snape may have been a genius move since the man was a Death Eater and he may have been a genius himself, but why Dumbledore kept giving the man second chances, he didn't know and didn't care. If it was some sort of sick appeasement for some past doing - he knew Snape had some sort of conflict with the Marauders back in the day when Snape and his parents had been students themselves, but truthfully Harry had no interest in playing the dour man's stupid one-sided war - then it wouldn't surprise him that much.

In any case, Harry had learnt more about how to brew a potion properly once he had managed to get away from Hogwarts for a bit, and he had discovered a few potions that were perfect for his use.

Yeah, it was illegal to use potions on muggles, but truthfully Harry didn't care; he wasn't muggle-baiting, or anything like that. He was just trying to make a living since the bastard Diggory family had gone too far and plundered what was in his family vaults. Harry smirked as he remembered what he had done to that family, and to several others to punish them. He knew the name Harry Potter was hated in the magical world now after what he had done, but he wasn't anywhere near the magical world, and truthfully he had no intention of rebuilding the Potter family for it to matter. He didn't really care about having children. When he died, he planned to have everything he had stolen given to charities.

But truthfully Harry would have been a burglar no matter what. He would have left the magical world after spending a few years there, being inundated by the never-ending and bewildering acts of reckless idiocy he had experienced each and every single year, and had gone back years; how his stupid parents had just stayed in Britain instead of doing what Harry himself would have done, just leave the country and let Voldemort and Dumbledore fight it out instead of believing stupid prophecies and looking for a Jesus like figure to do the dirty work, or alternatively he would have gone out personally and slaughtered every single Death Eater he could find, and sticking two fingers up at the Ministry for not having the balls to do the job themselves.

Harry snorted as he thought about the other examples of complete stupidity he had seen from the magical world; how his useless godfather had gotten himself thrown into Azkaban without looking at the long-term risks of what he was doing, how Dumbledore had stuck him with the Dursleys, whenever the students had ganged up on him because it was convenient, and so on and so on.

What happened in the magical world had happened years ago, and didn't really matter now, but he still remembered how quickly his experience had become sour and his desire to get out before his sanity eroded had become too strong.

But the one thing Harry remembered the most was the sheer laziness, and while it seemed he was lazy for using potions and relying on his contortionist skills to do all the work all the time. Sometimes he would break in when the homeowners had left a door or a window open, and it happened often. Sometimes he would not even use a minor spell to do anything.

As Harry continued to read the article, more things jumped out at him.

* * *

_He took a handful of Lindsay's clothes out of the wardrobe and shoved it into a bag he had shrunk down earlier before he zipped it up, and dumped it on the ground for the time being. He would have a hard time selling them, but a few months from now it would be straightforward to get rid of them at a car boot sale in Britain. _

_Rag-Doll had burgled dozens of celebrities over the years, so he wasn't too surprised when he found the wardrobes full of shoes, dresses, jackets, and God alone how much more else. He simply took half of them down and shoved them into another bag before he stopped with the clothes, certain and hopeful he would get a nice price for them, though if he didn't there was always Oxfam. _

_He would never understand celebrities, even though technically he was one himself; they pranced around dressed to the nines and yet they would dump their clothes after only going out in them once or twice, and then they would either dump them somewhere and leave them to rot, or leave them to rot in the wardrobes while the money they spent buying a new designer handbag, or a pair of classy shoes, or expensively tailored jackets could do so much more. Any intelligent being with a brain and a few cells inside to give it a bit of welly knew if you didn't want something, give it away or resell it, but no. _

_Rag-Doll looked through some of Lindsay's collection, studying each diamond he found studded into rings, earrings, ear studs, and bracelets through a jewellers eye-glass. He dropped a few of them to form a pile of fake diamonds, and he took the ones that weren't. It wasn't a particularly large jewellery selection, though there were one or two really pricey items in the collection Harry had no problem taking, there were also quite a few fake bits here and there. _

_Leaving the bedroom with his items, Rag-Doll looked around to see what else was around._

* * *

Harry poured some milk over his honey-covered cereal and stirred it in to create a wet, sweet mush before he spooned some into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Lindsay Lohan was not the only celebrity he had burgled recently, and as he looked at the small cut-outs of various newspapers sitting neatly on a pile near his cereal bowl, he smirked. He had burgled over twenty of them so far, and in a couple of days, he would burgle his twenty-first victim.

But the story of the Lindsay Lohan burglary had an unexpected twist.

He had been seen.

* * *

_Rag-Doll was just finishing up the packing up of what he had found in the living room when the front door opened and Lindsay and her minder returned. In the meantime, the burglar had been thinking about the insanities of the modern celebrity, who didn't make a lick of sense to the wizard, even though he had been a famous individual to the magical world once, though after a few moronic gawkers had gaped and pointed at his scar one minute then turned around and called him a Dark Lord in training the next, he had decided the celebrity life was overrated. In any event, he just wanted to be left alone to his own devices. _

_But muggle celebrities weren't that different from the ones he had met in the magical world. Like many other celebrities, Lindsay Lohan was quite egotistical and had a collection of the movies she had made over the years from The Parent Trap to Mean Girls, though she had a couple of copies lying around. Like many other things he didn't understand about celebrities, Gilderoy Lockhart among them, Harry just didn't understand what it was about having everything they had done surrounding them. It was almost as if they loved seeing themselves in movies, or in books. _

_But in Lindsay Lohans' case, it would be more likely the walking wreck was trying to remind herself of what she had been, though truthfully he didn't really care. _

_The only interest he had in such a celebrity was the fact she had enough things for him to steal. Sure, he was aware he wouldn't be able to sell the DVDs or CDs in the UK, but that wasn't a problem. _

_Rag-Doll had just been finishing up when he'd heard the front door open. He could hear Lindsay singing off-key, sounding stoned out of her fucking mind while he heard shuffling through the hallway, and muffled curses as if someone was lurching through while dragging something, probably Lindsay herself. _

_Rag-Doll looked down at the things he had stolen. Quickly he flicked his wand, cursing himself for being so occupied and with some quick spell-work (he would be forever grateful for silent casting; it made life so much easier just to __**think about **__the incantation rather than wasting time speaking, and besides in this case if they heard him then they would get a few too many clues about magic, something he didn't want; he didn't want to be responsible for the magical world being revealed. _

_Underneath his mask, Harry sighed with relief and closed his eyes when the last bag was shrunk down. He could handle the last one, but he'd gone a bit too far with the burglary. _

_Rag-Doll picked up the last bag, just as the minder walked in, carrying the half passed out actress in his arms while she looked around with glassy eyes, giggling insanely. _

_When the minder saw the burglar, he dropped the actress to the ground and rushed after Rag-Doll, but the burglar was too quick on his feet, but the minder was really close. He threw himself onto the contortionist before he even managed to reach the door, and knocked him to the ground. _

_Rag-Doll gasped as he became a sandwich between the minder and the floor. _

_The minder instantly wrapped his arms around Rag-Doll, who instantly choked when he began to squeeze, but the burglar had a few tricks up his sleeves. When he felt his air supply being constricted, Rag-Doll opened his mouth up and took a deep breath, using his metamorphamagus abilities take in as much air as he could while he thinned his air-ways while the squeezing became a bit too much. _

_With a growl, Rag-Doll twisted his neck around, surprising the minder who gazed down at him in surprise, but the contortionist didn't let up. He instantly twisted his spine, relying on the elasticity of his morphic magic to render his spine flexible enough to twist his legs around and he kicked the minder in the back. Rag-Doll had learnt how to change his body state to make his limbs and bones denser than the average adult, and he had learnt how to do the same with his muscles. The minder, not expecting the blow, loosened his hold on the thief with a gasp of breathless pain, but the burglar didn't let up. _

_Rag-Doll was furious. He had been attacked by muggles in the past, and when he had been fairly young he had learnt how to harden his bones and muscles, making his skin both leathery and rubbery to both cushion the blows Vernon and Dudley heaped on him, and he had even broken Dudley and Vernon's arms, and threatened to tear their heads off if they ever thought of touching him again. And to make sure they understood that, he had started to slowly crush both of their hands before they screamed and begged him to stop. He didn't. He told them they would leave him alone, if they tried to hurt or kill him, he would kill them in turn. It was the only weapon he had, and after that, he made sure his limbs and muscles were permanently hardened and dense for protection, on top of using his contortionist abilities to help him with his thefts. _

_But that was ages ago, but with his boxing and martial arts prowess, those skills combined had made him into a vicious, dangerous and immensely strong fighter. Still, it was very rare a muggle was a threat. _

_After he had managed to loosen the minder's grip, Rag-Doll leapt onto him so fast thanks to his literally springy legs, and he started to pummel the muggle. The minder gasped as one blow dislocated his jaw, before another one which felt like a sledgehammer knocked out a good number of his teeth, spraying bits of tooth, gum, and blood sprayed everywhere. The minder gave out a gurgling cry as he tried to fight back, but Rag-Doll delivered a punch straight to the rib-cage, while another one went straight for the gut which practically made the bruised and injured muggle gurgle out a scream, but it sounded so muffled it was barely inaudible. _

_Rag-Doll then turned to the minder's arm and snapped it so badly it not only snapped the bone, but it caused a terrible compound fracture, which made the muggle gurgle out another, far louder scream while he almost choked on his own blood. Calming down from his rage at the sight, Rag-Doll patted him gently on the back, and he reached into the muggle's pockets. The muggle, already in too much shock due to the blood loss, didn't stop him. Rag-Doll quickly found what he was looking for; the muggle's mobile phone. Within minutes he was through to the ambulance and to the police. Once he had given the details, he grabbed his loot and made for the door. He was long gone by the time the police and the paramedic technicians arrived._

* * *

Harry knew he had hospitalised Lindsays' minder. He actually felt quite guilty over what he had done to the man who was only trying to do his job. It almost made him think about what he was going to do in the long run. He finished his breakfast and headed out. He would need to spend a good few hours going over what he would need to be doing, but he would get there eventually. He hoped to reach a decision of whether to stay and to lie low for the time being now the police almost certainly would connect the dots from the minder's statement about what he was capable of doing, bending his body as he had, and fighting so viciously to know Rag-Doll was in Hollywood, or just to leave.

* * *

Author's note - The Bling-Ring was a small gang of kids who used social media to break into celebrities' homes when they found out when they would be out for that night, all for fame and fortune. Needless to say, it didn't go well. A movie was made based on the events, starring, ironically enough, Emma Watson.


	3. Chapter 3 A Break

I own nothing as usual.

* * *

Rag-Doll.

_The problem with my Rag-Doll disguise is that it garners far too much attention, especially now after that mess in LA, _Harry grimly thought to himself as he bagged a number of CDs which would be filtered through his contacts to the backstreet vendors of the city, although he knew he would need to use compulsion charms to make sure they didn't try to cheat him out of the profits. He had come across bastards like that in the past, and he had learnt how to deal with them. The easiest ways were to use legilimency to look into the mind of the fences to make sure they weren't trying to undervalue his thefts, and compulsion charms to make sure they gave him the right amounts of cash. Sometimes higher.

Hey, they tried to cheat him, so he cheated them in turn.

He didn't really care, especially since it was a win-win situation all around.

He had been back in the UK for a fortnight now. When he had made touchdown in Heathrow airport a few days after committing a string of burglaries in Hollywood and in other parts of America in general, already feeling the effects of the jet lag - the distance between America and Britain was not a fun one, and his body was already paying for it by the time he'd returned home.

While he put everything into the bag, Harry had time to think over the last few weeks and his resolutions. As he'd left the plane and went to grab his luggage, he had time to think. The LAPD had done their level best to track him down, using his reputation as an excuse to patrol the streets far more regularly until even the most insane serial killer would think twice about leaving their homes.

He should have known that by acting so viciously in Lindsay Lohans' home the police would react quickly, but he hadn't realised they would go as far as sending out more patrols to try to catch him out. When he had first tried to slip out of his hotel and commit a burglary of another celebrity, well the presence of more than one cop car passing through the neighbourhood had put him off. A few more nights, the same old story before he decided to leave it be for a week.

In the end, after a week of lying low and using the time he had free sending off the bits that he could as parcel post to the PO Box he had in London, Harry had decided to cut his losses and return home. He just had to escape from America quickly though he knew that the Americans would never really be able to track him down. He had used magical transportation to travel from Los Angeles to New York, and from there he had caught a plane all the way back to London.

When he had returned to the windmill, Harry had decided that he was not going to stop being a burglar, but it was time for Rag-Doll to be put to rest for a short period of time. Harry didn't regret it, he knew it made perfect sense to just temporarily retire the role.

It was extremely stupid to allow Rag-Doll to be in Los Angeles one week, and then London the next, but Harry pushed that out of the way. There was something strangely nice and ordinary about breaking into a house without the Rag-Doll guise.

In any case, he had done it before, he had committed a few burglaries in his time without using magic and he had also committed burglaries without using his Rag-Doll disguise or his contortionist abilities. He was doing it now. He was also making a concerted effort not to use magic for his latest burglaries.

Harry had learnt how to use magic for burglaries, but he had also learnt how to burgle without casting a single spell. He occasionally dropped both his disguise and his powers although he never left anywhere without his wand, which was his symbol as a wizard. He might have been raised as a muggle by the Dursleys who had wanted him to be a muggle, but Harry was a wizard and that would never stop.

But that didn't mean he couldn't do things without magic (okay, so he had cheated a bit by casting a few surveillance charms on the place to let him know when his victims wouldn't be here, but that didn't mean he would use magic inside, right?)

Harry smirked as he finished going over the sitting room. He had been in the house now for the last few minutes, and he was just finishing up when he stopped when he heard a car pulling into the drive. The burglar remained extremely still while he checked the time on his watch. Shit! He had known the homeowners had children, and while the dad went to work while the mother was left to take the kids to school, she shouldn't have gotten back until much later than this.

Harry turned and ran towards the back of the house where he opened the backdoor and slipped out, slipping his wand out of his pocket to re-lock the door so they wouldn't realise he had left this way, and cast a notice-me-not charm on himself - another cheat, but it didn't matter right now, and he calmly slipped out of the back without being seen. He ran towards the back gate, flicking his wand at the wooden door and unlocked and opened it by the time he got there, and he closed it again with magic. Harry didn't relax until he was in the alley.

* * *

Getting back to his Ford wasn't a problem for him; okay, he knew that by now the homeowner must have raised the alarm that a burglary had taken place, but truthfully he knew the police wouldn't try to stop him leaving since they had no proof he had been involved, and in any case, people came and went through the alleyway all the time, so they wouldn't suspect him. The burglary itself had happened a couple of streets away from where he had parked his car, and people got into cars all the time.

And besides that, he had been wearing his backpack the whole time, so there was nothing suspicious about that.

Arriving at his car, Harry reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the key to unlock the door while he threw his backpack into the boot before closing it and then he opened the driver's door when a kid came running over to him, crying. He was wearing a school uniform.

"Hey, mister!" the boy cried out, and Harry closed the door of his car and looked at the kid worriedly.

"What's wrong?" he asked the boy.

The boy was looking up at him with tears trickling down his face. "It's-it's my mummy, mister. S-she's just been beaten up by two bad men wearing masks."

Harry blinked at the story. He bent down to the child's level and wondered if he would feel okay if he put his hands reassuringly on his shoulders, but he decided against it; just because the Dursleys hadn't cared if he was kidnapped by a stranger, although personally at times it would have been a merciful release, didn't mean the kid's mother would. More likely she would raise almighty hell to find her kid. "What happened?" he asked instead.

"M-mummy was about to drive me to school, but before we could open the door, it burst open, and two bad men broke in!" the kid managed to get out before he began sobbing.

Harry wondered what he was going to do. It was more than clear to him that the boy was describing a house robbery, but it was just so strange to hear of a burglary and a house robbery happening so close to each other though it wasn't uncommon. But he was more worried about what was going to happen next. "Have you told your father?" he asked himself, his mind racing as it tried to come up with a plan…

The boy shook his head. "N-no," he replied, "my daddy doesn't live with us."

Harry didn't even try to work out what that meant. "Okay, did you ring for the emergency services?" he asked. "You know, the police? The ambulance?"

The boy shook his head again, though his time there was a sheepish expression on his face that said that it hadn't occurred to him. "N-no, mister. I-I wanted someone to help my m-mummy right away."

Harry mentally sighed as he looked at the boy, his mind racing as he thought for a moment. The boy had come to him for help, and while that so-called 'saving people' thing Granger had come out with during his time at Hogwarts didn't exist, he did want to help this kid.

But he was worried. If he helped this kid, the police would be involved, and if that happened they might ask a load of some truly irritating and stupid questions which would lead to curiosity about why he was here, miles from home._ Then again, I might get lucky and erase this kid's memories so then he tried to look for help, but couldn't find it, so he called home. _

But even as the thought penetrated his brain, he knew he couldn't do it. Children were sacred to him, especially considering his own empathy for them and House-elves. He stood up. "Take me to your mother, I'll see what I can do," he said to the kid.

He didn't know what he could do if he was honest with himself while the child grinned up at him in relief and joy, and dragged him to the house. He wasn't a doctor though he had studied a few bits of healing, and he had learnt some basic first aid. But if he could get to the woman, help her, and call for the police and the ambulance, then he might be able to get away from here before anybody questioned his presence.

The boy took him to one of the cookie-cutter houses - again, he would never understand why muggles had to make their houses the same and not allow them to personalise the homes to their own tastes - and Harry saw instantly that the place looked like a warzone. The front door had been smashed in two, and there were pieces of wood and glass on the ground. Harry ran towards the front door with the kid, his eyes only giving the door a momentary glance, seeing that it had been smashed by something like a battering ram, but his eyes were focused on the woman lying on the ground. The moment he saw her, Harry could see why the woman's son was so scared. She looked like she had been kicked and punched in the face.

Harry bent down next to her and looked her over briefly, but he didn't trust her bloodied face. She was unconscious, so she wasn't screaming in pain. Harry jumped up and he dashed towards the phone. He picked up the receiver, praying that this wouldn't be the last day of his freedom, but if the worst occurred, then he would need to use magic…

"Hello?" he came out of his thoughts quickly as the phone was answered. "I'd like to report a robbery at….," he paused so he could read off the address that was on an envelope near the phone, "I'm just passer-by but the mother's son came to me to tell me what happened. What?… No, he's fine. It was just the mother who was hurt… yes, she's been pretty badly hurt; she's unconscious right now, but she looks like she's been beaten badly, so you had better send an ambulance, the damage looks quite nasty…. Yes. Yes, okay. You won't be long?…. Okay, good….Yeah, I'll wait with the boy….No, I won't touch anything."

Harry put the phone down and went back to the boy, who was crying softly over his mother. He looked up as Harry knelt down next to him. "It's okay," he said as reassuringly as he could, cursing the Dursleys for making him less emphatic towards others, "the police and the ambulance are on their way. Your mother is going to be fine."

The boy looked up at him, sniffling. Swallowing awkwardly, Harry examined the woman's body, making sure the woman was still breathing and that her chest was still rising and falling. As he waited with the boy, Harry was left feeling uncertain about what was going to happen now, but he just hoped that he could get away from here without the police being too suspicious. With the police already in the neighbourhood by now, it didn't take too long before they came around and secured the scene.

The boy cried as the paramedics came and started examining his mother, but they let him go with them.

One of the paramedic technicians glanced at Harry. "Are you the boy's father?" she asked.

"No, I'm just a passer's by," Harry replied, hoping that this worked, "the kid came out to me as I was getting into my car."

One of the Detective Constables looked up at that. "What were you doing around here, sir?"

Harry bit back the automatic response that came into his mind, though he wondered why coppers had to phrase their questions so stupidly. "I was taking photographs with my camera," he said, lacing his words with magic to make the police officer susceptible to the suggestions he was putting out; so much for his desire not to use too much magic, but with the way this was going, he knew he would need magic to help, "I am thinking of going onto a Photography course at a college somewhere, I'm just trying to develop my techniques, follow my initiative."

The constable looked at him with a slightly glazed look but then snapped out of it. "I'll need to see your photographs, sir," he said.

"That's fine with me," Harry replied, thankful he had two backpacks in his car, one with the loot and the other with the digital camera he kept there which allowed him to take snapshots of the street in case of an emergency like this; after the way he had nearly been caught out by the cops during that burglary before he had gone to the gym before his fifth year at Hogwarts, he had made sure if he ever went out to commit a burglary in his Rag-Doll disguise, then he would find a story that was believable and plausible about his presence. He had chosen photography because with a few pictures at different angles with the same story, or that he was a social anorak with a fascination with a particular kind of car, that too was just as believable and it lent credence to the story.

"Okay," the constable looked out just in time to see the boy being taken into the ambulance before it was driven off while the scene of the crime was properly checked. "Do you know how we can contact the boy's father?"

"I asked the kid that," Harry replied, unsure how he should feel about this topic, "but his father doesn't live with them. I don't know the kid or the mother."

Escorted by the Detective Constable, Harry went back to his car. He unlocked it and he found the bag. It had been magically re-engineered to push the burglary loot into a different place while it kept the camera bag inside safe. Harry took the camera bag out after unzipping the backpack and he took out the digital camera he had there. He scrolled through the pictures, and he showed the DC what he had been doing.

The DC stared at the photographs scrolling through the screen. "You have quite an interest in cars, and in old factories," he commented.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I find places like that to be fascinating," he said, lacing his words with magic again to make this DC push him to the side. He had been worried at first the police would take one look at the house burglary that had happened only a couple of streets away (done by him) and the robbery in the house belonging to the boy and his mother had a connection, but then he heard from the coppers who had done the preliminary check inside the house showed the two techniques were different; whereas the burglary had been performed silently, nothing was damaged, the robbery itself was the opposite.

The house where the boy and the mother lived in was now a shambles. The robbers had smashed the place to bits while they'd terrified that little boy and battered his mothers face in. Harry felt sorry for the boy, but while he knew he could have put the kid up, he knew it was a bad idea. The boy didn't know him that well, and he knew social services and the police would keep a very tight watch over him. He wanted to avoid that. In any case, he doubted very much the kid would be given to him. The DC had had enough of seeing the photographs after seeing one where Harry had done four closes-ups of a Toyota.

"Right, well that should be enough, sir," he said. "We may need to call you again in case we need to ask any further questions."

Harry nodded, knowing that was not true so he didn't really need to focus his time on worrying about it too much. He had already cast a mild spell on the police to make sure none of them even tried to get in touch with him. In any case, he had told them everything he had known. He wasn't a witness, he hadn't actually seen the house being smashed to pieces during the robbery, so he saw no reason to suppose the police would ask him anything else.

Harry waited until the police officer was gone before he got into his car and drove away.

* * *

Harry was reading a book in his windmill, a mug of hot cocoa sitting nearby, watching the TV with only half an ear while a plate with a slice of raspberry cheesecake was next to it. The cheesecake had been handmade, which had given him something to do with his time. The raspberries were a bit bitter but Harry wasn't concerned about that, the cheesecake was still delicious, and making it had given him something to do with his time.

It had been three days since Harry had committed the last burglary - he was starting to ask himself if someone had cast some kind of hex on his person, everything seemed to be pissed up the wall from his time in LA, and now in Britain - and he'd been keeping his head down in case the police did come to visit him.

So far he had been lucky, but he planned to put off committing any more burglaries until twelve days had passed. He had eight days left to go before he went back out committing more burglaries, and he wasn't in any hurry to commit anymore for the time being.

Harry reached for the cheesecake and used his fork to cut a piece off and ate it, relishing the bitter-sweet taste as he slowly chewed while he watched the TV. The story of the robbery had been on the TV, but after a couple of days no more had come out of it. Harry decided to put the whole thing out of his mind, but he had no intention of going out and committing a burglary just yet. All of his instincts were telling him to wait and keep his head down.

Harry had not gotten this far into his burglary career by being sloppy and careless. He had been reaching the point when he'd need to keep his head down anyway, but the violent house robbery he'd seen had made him do it much earlier.

Harry wasn't really bothered by the need to keep his head down but he was curious about what had happened to the kid and his mother. But he wasn't surprised there was little information out there about the outcome of the investigation. The police regularly only gave out information about arrests and burglaries (or robberies, depending on your point of view), so there was little out there.

* * *

Harry's rest lasted another two weeks before he went back out to commit a burglary. He decided on a number of houses quite close to Brighton, in a place called Saltdean.

Saltdean itself rested in a bowl between two tall cliffs, but as he explored the place which was miles from his windmill, he fell in love with the place. Many of the houses were bungalows, but while they shared the same basic appearances as each other the unspoken rules you found in soulless places like Little Whinging where everything from the size of your dick to the type of car you had, and the exact height of the blades of grass in your lawn, every house was personalised for the occupants own tastes.

Harry decided that the first place he would burgle in Saltdean would be in a street called Ashurst Avenue. He had already found a specific house. The street was extremely close to a large field called Telscombe Tye, so there was no opposite street for him to be observed which was a plus. Another was the fact you had to walk down a flight of stone steps to reach the front door. It was such a funny house, really. On-street level, you had the garage but down the flight of steps, you had the main house. It was surrounded by trees and greenery which provided a barrier to stop anyone from seeing him commit the burglary.

Harry waited quite close under a notice-me-not charm and waited from dawn to a few hours for the homeowners to leave. When they were gone, the door was not an obstacle.

* * *

For the next eight weeks, Harry committed dozens of burglaries around Brighton. He burgled a few flats in the Brighton Marina, in Rottingdean which was a town close to Saltdean itself, and a few in Lewes. Harry took bits and pieces mostly, but he concentrated solely on cash and wherever he could find it, though he wasn't too fussy. Many of the methods he used to break in were muggle means, really - but he used magic to cover his tracks, though sometimes he simply used a basic unlocking charm here and there if he wanted to spice things up a little bit here and there.

After eight weeks, Harry came to a problem. He was enjoying what he was doing so much that he almost didn't want to stop.


	4. Chapter 4 Diamonds

I own nothing.

Only one more chapter to go, but I want to thank you all for enjoying my story. I hope you enjoy this instalment, and please continue to let me know what you think.

* * *

Rag-Doll.

The coffin was coloured black though the plaque was burnished in shining gold. The coffin looked larger than what he expected it to be, but then again his experience with funerals was practically non-existent; he had never truly had anyone close to him to bury before, and this was the first 'funeral' that he had ever attended, although it wasn't a funeral. But aside from those semantics, Harry thought the colour of the coffin was appropriate.

Yet he knew when his plans for the coffin were realised, the colour would be the least of his concerns.

As he sat in the boat as he watched as it slowly drew up against the point where the burial would take place, Harry rubbed his neck. The collar was extremely tight around his throat, and the tie made him feel as though he had the hangman's noose wrapped around it. He just wasn't used to wearing smart suits, and while he was thankful this would only be for a day, Harry just wanted this part over and done with.

Harry took a look around as the boat moved further and further away from Newhaven Harbour, passing the ancient-looking dockyard that lined the mouth of the River Ouse. There were quite a few onlookers as they took in the procession, and more than once Harry saw them show respect for the body they believed was inside the coffin. He just nodded his head, thanking them for their respect was the boat moved further out of the harbour into the British Channel before it travelled down the coast several miles down the coast. From where he was sitting Harry could distantly see the beaches of Seaford, a smallish town just outside of Newhaven. Harry had visited the town once or twice, and while he knew some people such as his Aunt Petunia would have sneered at it and called it a dump although everywhere was not perfect, Harry actually liked it.

Harry sat and listened quietly as the vicar rubbed his stomach. Harry hoped that the vicar wasn't suffering from seasickness; the last thing he wanted was for the ceremony to be spoiled by some religious cleric who couldn't show some restraint. While at the end of the year this particular funeral meant nothing to Harry although he pretended it did, he wanted it to go smoothly without any incident.

After what he had gone through, he just wanted a nice quiet funeral.

* * *

_He sat quietly in the van and trying not to fall asleep as it was pitch dark outside, not bothering to interact with the rest of the gang while he sat with a simple, battered old baseball cap on his head. More than once, a few of the gang sent him a quick look of awe. They knew who he was, Rag-Doll. More than once when he had received the summons/invite to join the gang a few of the gang members wanted to see him perform a few of his tricks. _

_A few of them had been sceptical of his identity at first, though that was hardly any surprise since he knew where they were coming from because of his youth, and on that side of the topic some of them were a bit shocked at just how young he appeared, some of them had expected him to be an older burglar, but he wasn't bothered that. Nor was he really concerned about everyone here seeing his face. He had placed a spell on himself so while everyone could see what he looked like, they wouldn't be able to remember it clearly. _

_A few of them had been somewhat in denial that he could be Rag-Doll even though they knew he'd be brought in to help them. At first, he had been reluctant to show off his contortionist abilities. It brought back memories of how Ron Weasley had pissed him off when he'd demanded to see his scar, not the least bit concerned that he was demanding to see something that was essentially the symbol of how he'd come to be an orphan, but in this case, things were very different. _

_Harry knew if he didn't show off what he was reputed to do then the gang would say he was a liability - some of them were already protesting about his involvement despite his very real skill at burglary, though at least all of them were professionals in their respective fields, or at least he hoped so. But he knew if he refused to show off then they might see him as a fraud, and he couldn't have that since many of the jobs he was given depended on his ability to get in and out with a minimum of effort. _

_Reluctantly Harry had performed a few tricks. Not many, but a few to keep them happy and to convince them that he was in the gang whether they liked it or not, but fortunately nothing bad came from it. Once they had seen him perform he was brought into the fold and was told what was going down. _

_He had to admit the plan was daring; using the sewers as a ready-made tunnel to travel to a Diamond Merchants, detonate a number of explosives to set off every alarm in the area so the police would not have a clue where to begin since there were many businesses and a couple of banks there which would only add to the confusion as the police tried to mitigate the worst of it, and try to find the cause of the explosions as well as where they had taken place, giving them some time to getting into the Diamond Merchants, and then robbing it blind. _

_Finally, the van came to a halt, and they got out on a scruffy street outside what looked like a really dilapidated backstreet garage. Harry got out of the van, grabbing his backpack as he did before he followed the others into the garage._

* * *

The boat had neared the edge of the South Downs which was where the 'burial' was meant to take place. Harry smiled as he took in the massive cliffs that seemed to blaze with light as the chalk reflected the light of the sun. Finally, the boat came to a halt, and the motor was stopped and fuel was no longer being pumped into the ignition chamber, and the anchor was dropped with a splash.

Harry stood up and waited for the ceremony to begin.

* * *

_While Harry had to admit the plan to come down here, and use the sewers as a ready-made tunnel - with the size and the maze-like network of dark tunnels where it would be extremely hard to get any physical evidence from anywhere except on the site where the burglary was going to take place so when the Old Bill did come down here when they discovered what had happened and joined the dots, they wouldn't even be able to work out where the thieves had come from - he wished there had been a different way. _

_However, he was impressed with how the leader of the gang, the guy who'd organised the whole thing, had spray-painted UV paint on the walls as markers to let them know where they were going, but already the gang had been forced to stop several times to plant bombs in the walls so then a part of the plan, a vital part was carried off without a hitch. _

_Harry was really impressed; he had heard of some burglars who carefully planned things down the last detail failed to take some things into account. His burglaries didn't count; most of them were straight forward heists in places a little more 'open' than a diamonds' merchants, so there was a lot here for him to learn. _

_If only they weren't relying on a sewer. He had never once imagined for himself that he despised the filth that was down here until he had come here himself to commit a burglary. _

_He had heard about people who liked coming down here, who were not sewer workers, but were fascinated by the sewers themselves. _

_Well, it took all sorts. _

_Personally, as long as he never came down here again, Harry didn't really care. The good news was there were none of those "fatbergs" he'd heard so much about on the news, about people dumping gallons and gallons of fat from their meals as they cooked down here, which then congealed with excrement and god knew what else, but the stench of a mixture of pee, shit, and rotten food, and other rubbish made Harry wrinkle his nose in distaste. _

"_So how did you get into burglary, then?" someone asked. _

_Harry glanced at the speaker, he was an older man and for a moment the younger burglar just stared into the man's face. The older muggle burglar just thought he was looking at him thoughtfully as if choosing the right words to speak with. In truth, Harry was just looking into the man's mind to see his innermost secrets. Fortunately, the man wasn't a grass, so there was that. _

_From the look of the other man's mind, the other burglar was just asking not just to take his own mind off of the disgusting stench _

"_Oh," Harry replied casually, wondering how he could actually explain without going into detail about his contortionist abilities, though he was prepared to offer a basic explanation. "I started by stealing a few bits of food, and then I broke into a house and just helped myself."_

"_How old were you?" another burglar asked. _

_Harry chuckled. "Young," he said shortly, deciding to be a bit vague there without giving anything else away - talking about how he had stolen off of his relatives would take far too long, and besides that, it wasn't relevant since many criminals started out much the same way and reminisced without giving much away. "At around the same time, I found a book about contortion, and I began practicing."_

_He didn't mind dropping in the half-truth. And besides, it was the truth. He had looked at the pages printed for him by the librarian and he had practiced with what he had found out, although his metamorphamagus skills had helped him without falling into the same problems normal muggle contortionists had with their limbs and muscles. Thinking about that ancient librarian who'd helped him, gave Harry pause; though whether she knew who Rag-Doll was, Harry had no idea. Hell, he didn't even know if the woman was alive or not, but if she had planned to reveal who he was, she would have done it ages ago. _

"_After that, I just committed a few more burglaries, and that was it, and here we are," Harry said after giving the library a moment's thought before he dismissed her from his mind, "What about you?" _

"_Me?" the burglar who'd started this conversation while they'd walked down one dark, stinking sewer after another to take their minds off of the stench. _

"_Yeah," Harry nodded while he shined his torch on the wall, and tried not to think about what that dark slimy substance on the wall was, though it did horrible things to his stomach. _

"_Er, okay," the burglar said, nonplussed; he had only wanted to know a little bit more about the mysteriously famous Rag-Doll, he hadn't expected the thief himself to turn the entire conversation around, but he guessed he should have done. "Well, I became a burglar when a friend and I were fired from our jobs. I was down on my luck, and so we both broke into a place, and it started from there. Together we both burgled a dozen homes, and then eventually we moved onto higher things."_

_Harry nodded. He knew all the details already, albeit in more detail after having a quick look into the muggle's mind. But he nodded as he accepted it. "And now here you are, from an ordinary burglar to someone about to take part in a major heist. Impressive," Harry commented with a smile to let the other man know he was being complimented, "most impressive."_

"_Are you channelling Darth Vader?"_

_Harry laughed, the sound echoed through the tunnels. "No."_

"_Oi! Don't make any noise 'own 'ere! We're trying to get there quietly!"_

* * *

The coffin was being prepared to be released into the sea. Harry listened to the vicar, doing his best to look as solemn and as grieving as he could. But as he stared at the coffin he was already making plans, for retrieving what was inside at a later date. He would be back here later tonight when he was a hundred per cent certain of where the right cliff was.

But as he paid half an ear to the funeral currently underway, Harry remembered the details of the burglary….

* * *

_Harry winced as the bombs went off, and he knew from above although there were layers and layers of concrete, clay and brick, and metal above to drown out the sounds of the burglar alarms that were definitely sounding as the numerous bombs planted in key places throughout the sewers exploded. Steven, the guy who'd set this all up months and months in advance before tonight had really had his homework. He had planted bombs near every single bank, knowing when the police were called out they would have a very very hard time trying to pin down the source. _

_Getting into the vault was the fun part. Harry took a swig of water as he passed through the hole; he'd heard one of the downsides of the Baker St robbery had been the entire gang had been dehydrating. He had no idea how long this would take, but Harry knew he did not want to dehydrate while he was inside. _

_It looked like a few other members of the gang had thought ahead as well, though not all of them. After they'd all shared their water around, Harry and the others went around the place and started packing away the diamonds. Harry was impressed by how professional the group was. They moved like a well-oiled machine - they stowed the diamonds away in bags and then carried them out to the hole leading into the sewer. For three whole hours, the gang had filled over half a dozen bags while they kept their ears and eyes open for any signs of the police coming to arrest them. _

_But there was nothing. When they heaved the bags out of the garage inspection pit, but just before the gang could leave three police squad cars appeared, sirens blazing. Harry, who was in the van at the time packing everything all away, jumped in shock and looked out of the door. The police were surrounding the other burglars who were getting the other bags at the time, but so far the police weren't anywhere near him. Harry dashed into the cab and he found that the keys weren't there. Harry tapped the ignition with his wand and the engine started instantly before he drove the van away, ignoring the cries of the burglars and the police, and he drove off into the night._

* * *

The newspapers had gone wild with the story, and they had stoked the fire with every new edition which covered the burglary. They talked about how the burglars had managed to get into the Diamond merchants, how they'd used the sewers as a ready-made tunnel network to reach the Diamond Merchants and how they'd blasted a hole into it and set up other explosives to trigger other alarms in the immediate area.

Harry dismissed all of that, though he wished the media would stop milking every single detail that they could every chance they could get.

The mystery that was mostly on Harry's mind was how on Earth the police had managed to catch them. The answer was simple, and it was no fault to the gang at all. One of the residents of the street close to the garage had noticed the group of men leaving the van, and noted some of them were acting strangely outside the long-disused garage before calling the police. The newspapers were slightly off about the subject, but Harry couldn't help but ask himself if the caller had actually been a former customer or it could have been one of the former owners of the garage before it was shut down, or something along those lines, though it was very vague which was odd, but it didn't matter really.

As he looked at the coffin, Harry remembered the time he had needed to prepare for the 'burial.'

* * *

_It had been a few days since the burglary and three days since the police had quickly and unexpectedly turned up and broken up the gang although he had managed to escape. The police and the newspapers were going mad, one was actively trying to track him down, though they didn't know that he had long since stashed the bags into his own car and driven all the way down to the mill which he had made his home. _

_Once he had the bags full of diamonds in his kitchen at the base of the windmill, Harry wondered what he was going to do. Unlike some burglars who'd rush things and inevitably get themselves caught, Harry had long since learnt the value of patience and taking precautions. He didn't dare move any of the diamonds, and besides, why waste this opportunity? The longer these diamonds were out of sight, the easier it would be to sell them at a later date. On the way home from London in his car, Harry had juggled with thoughts about what he was going to do while at the same time he was driving his car. _

_The easiest and simplest way was to simply bury the lot, however, he had needed to concentrate on his drive back home to really give the idea more thought. _

_After grabbing his notepad and a pen, Harry began writing down what he wanted. The most logical burial he could think of was a simple one in a graveyard. But as he put a lot more thought into the idea, the more he disagreed with it; for instance, he would he would to visit the graveyard on occasion, and if one of the gang came after him looking for the diamonds then they would try to force him to take them to the site where he'd gotten rid of them. _

_No-one but he should know the truth about where the diamonds were. And so he conducted a bit more research. Finally, he got the idea of a burial at sea, and he decided to find the best way of getting it all done. It took Harry the best part of a month to set it all up. But he didn't start until three months until the burglary had been committed before he put his plans into operation. He found it so hard to imagine the paperwork which went into funerals and he made the solemn promise to not do this again any time soon. At the same time he began training to become a diver so when he did go down to retrieve the diamonds when he felt enough time had elapsed, he would be ready. He chose to have the 'funeral' off of the South coast, not far from Newhaven town or Seaford because they were easy enough for him to reach._

* * *

The vicar was just finishing up with his part while Harry turned on the CD play and the sounds of one of Beethovens' symphonies sounded on the air just as the coffin was slowly and carefully lifted up and submerged beneath the waves.

Harry turned to face the vicar with a smile. "Thank you," he said quietly.

The vicar smiled benignly, though Harry could tell from reading the man's surface thoughts he was troubled by something, but fortunately, his clerical training and his experience as a vicar stopped him from answering the questions. Harry was glad of that, and as he looked at the patch of water where the coffin had submerged, Harry knew his life would go on. He would continue to be a burglar even though his pension was now fully assured.

When the boat returned to the harbour, Harry got into his car and silently left.


	5. Chapter 5 Rag-Doll Returns

Well, here it is, the final chapter of Rag-Doll. I want to thank everyone who has read and liked this story so far and I hope you continue to like my work in other stories.

I don't own Harry Potter.

Enjoy.

* * *

Rag-Doll.

It had been six months since Harry had taken part in the burglary where he had buried at sea a sizeable fortune in diamonds, and in those six months, he and his Rag-Doll identity had been quietly buried. Literally. Harry had placed the outfit he wore as Rag-Doll into a box, though he continued to burgle whenever he could while he kept his head down. He wasn't really worried about anyone truly betraying him after the break-in at the diamond's merchants thanks to the spell he'd cast on each of them; they would know Rag-Doll had participated in the burglary, but they would not even think about revealing who he was. They wouldn't reveal what Rag-Doll looked like. How he sounded. Bits about his past. Nothing.

Rag-Doll had survived for this length of time simply because nobody knew anything about him and Harry wanted to keep it that way.

Harry didn't really care if they were confused about why they would still feel loyal to someone who'd virtually pinched everything they had stolen. He also had no doubt in his head if he had wanted to, he would have escaped if he had found himself in prison, but he didn't want to end up in a cell in case the muggle police found out who and what he was. Harry knew the muggle government kept in touch with the Ministry, though how many politicians knew the details, he couldn't say, he did know the Prime Minister was probably the only one though he had no way of knowing just how often they did keep in touch.

If he knew the magical world then contact was kept at a bare minimum, but the last thing he wanted was for the magical world to know where he was.

As he thought about it while he was reading a book in the living room of his windmill, Harry was in two minds about what the Ministry would actually do if they found out he was committing crimes in the muggle world. On the one hand, they might not even care about the fact he had burgled the muggle world due to their own prejudices towards the muggles in general, but they would probably jump at the chance of putting him back into Azkaban after all the chaos he'd caused.

In the meantime, he had enough on his mind as it was. He was planning on bringing Rag-Doll back, the only problem was finding the right type of place to burgle. He wanted it to be relatively easy, simple, and one where he would get instant cash for it. Harry put down his book for a moment, and he thought about the matter.

He didn't want to commit another house burglary. He had committed enough of those in the last few months, and truthfully they were starting to get incredibly tiresome and very boring. He didn't want to get involved with another gang either since they came with all kinds of problems. He didn't want another diamond robbery. And yet, he wanted something where he would get a lot of money.

_So how do I do it? _he asked himself before he grabbed his book again. _I want a place where I can get in with my skills, and get out again. I also want it to be simple, with no complications. _

Grunting as he got up, Harry started to pace up and down while he ignored what he was watching on television while he thought about it. He paced for half an hour, his mind going over one plan after another, but truthfully there was nothing that really appealed to him. He had burgled his way through Sussex, picking places clean and he had taken part in a major diamond robbery where he'd gotten away with everything. Thinking about the diamond robbery tempted Harry to think about doing something similar. He had enjoyed that robbery since so many angles had been anticipated and worked on, including the use of the sewers although their pong had put him off, though he had to admit the idea of using a city or a towns' layout and geography against it as he committed a burglary was appealing, then he stopped when the logical part of his mind reasserted itself. It wasn't practical.

Even if he could find something out there which was similar to the diamond merchants and had much the same risk, but required the use of high explosives and a foolproof way of getting to it like with a tunnel the police and the public would be further mystified. And if the government got wind of it, anything mysterious about the crimes, they might put two and two together and alert the Ministry that a wizard was committing thefts.

Harry didn't need to imagine what they'd class as mysterious; no signs of forced entry was one of the most obvious cases, but usually Harry cast a duplication spell on a house key that he found whenever he committed a burglary like that, but sometimes he either used lock snapping or bump keys whenever he could. Sometimes he would simply not bother and just use an unlocking charm on the door, but as long as the burglaries were low key, no-one should know the difference.

That was usually houses. Jewellery stores were straightforward enough and magic wasn't really necessary for anything more than shutting off an alarm. Banks were not on his agenda, so he left them alone.

But Harry was not stupid. He knew if he didn't vary his scenes then the magical authorities would have been alerted. It had been even worse in America; with the MACUSA's attitude to muggles discovering their world after that stupid bitch Dorcas Twelvetrees had made the unimaginably stupid mistake of revealing her magic and her wand to a muggle who knew about the wizarding world but wanted proof in order to discover and expose the 'evil' of magic, their reactions would be even worse.

Finding ways of breaking into American homes had been even harder, but not impossible. But Harry, who was a big believer in the Statute of Secrecy although he truly wished the magical communities around the world monitored muggle-borns so then they didn't suffer from the same abusive hell he had gone through himself, had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure the magical world did not know he was there.

Other things that would be classed as mysterious and suspicious would be how one man would be able to commit a burglary in something like a vault when such a job would need the help of five or more bodies, and he truly didn't want to form a gang to break into something that had a vault. Nor did he want to break into an art gallery. Art theft was not really his forte. He had never really been interested in art, so he didn't know the difference between a fake or a genuine painting, and if he were honest he couldn't muster the effort to learn the myriad things to identify a fake or a genuine painting.

Harry sighed after half an hour. _Okay, I need a job that is big but simple, something that can be pulled off by only one guy. I don't want anything really big, just simple, _he thought to himself, reasoning it all out in his head.

As Rag-Doll, Harry had reasoned the simpler the burglary, the better it would be for all concerned. Harry had never truly understood why heists shown in movies had to be so mega complicated, but he guessed it had to do with the need to make it exciting. The only true burglary film in his mind had always been the movies Burglar starring Whoopi Goldberg.

Harry sighed again at his disappointment. He was just about to admit defeat when it occurred to him that he was trying too hard, and he was trying to be too showy. He had been on high since the diamond robbery, he realised, and that was not a good thing for him. He would need to return to basics, and he knew the best way to do that. The best target…

A jewellery shop.

Okay, he admitted to himself that another burglary involving diamonds and rings was another repeat, but he needed something relatively straightforward and simple. Looking at it now, Harry realised he didn't need it to be too big. Mind made up, Harry nodded to himself, but then he came to another problem.

Where was he going to commit the burglary? He would want it to be quite far from where he was at the moment. For a moment he considered Brighton, but then he decided against it; he had already committed enough burglaries there, and he had also burgled the jewellery shops in Churchill Square. He didn't even consider the Eastbourne one either. No, he wanted something else, something less boring.

Harry sighed and thought about it before he went to the bureau where he had a map of the UK. Once he had pulled it out and arranged it on the small dining table he kept there so then he could eat meals in a more formal manner rather than just eat it on the couch he looked over it and began to look and he began to strike things off of the list.

_Are there any large jewellery shops in Hastings? _he thought to himself as his eyes fixed on the coastal town on the map. He mulled it over in his mind before he dismissed it. He didn't really know Hastings that well, and there were other places on the map he could look into, and his eyes searched the map…

_Hmm. I have never been to Southhampton before, nor the Isle of Wight. I wonder….._Harry thought to himself before he nodded before he made preparations.

* * *

Harry smiled as he stepped off of the catamaran ferry which had spirited him away from Portsmouth harbour and had brought him to Ryde pier. The journey hadn't been too difficult, and now he was here on the Isle of Wight, he planned to spend a couple of days exploring the island before he committed his burglaries.

Harry opted to walk the whole way down the pier while he ignored the old-fashioned Tube trains - he dimly recognised them as similar to the ones at the London Transport Museum site at Acton Town, and he smiled as he heard them rattle; he had no idea how old they were, but it was clear they were still going and he had to hand it to British engineering to keep going even when it sounded like they were on the point of falling apart. Harry took a deep breath and soaked in the sea air. If there was one thing he had always wanted as a kid, it was to get away from the Dursleys and go to a place near the sea, anything to get away from the boring and dull world of suburbia.

Harry booked into the hotel he had spent the last few days arranging a room with though he wasn't particularly bothered about it really, he didn't care what the hotel room looked like just so long as it was enough for him to settle in for a few days. After he had dumped his things, he used the car he had hired to explore as much of the island as he could. He found a cliff though it wasn't made up with chalk, but more like mud, and you could walk along it for miles while being slashed with the wind. Harry spent a good few hours there, exploring as much of the coastline as he could, though he felt the people who ran the island could invest in a better way of getting down to the beach. One point of interest where the shells of what looked like old holiday homes, but his interest came from a purely urban explorers view.

He found three jewellery shops of interest. One in Ryde, the second in Newport, and in East Cowes. Harry visited all three of them; there was nothing majorly special about them, and as he studied all of them he knew it would be a cinch getting into all three of them compared to anything more complicated like a gallery or a diamond merchant.

After spending a few days learning about the architecture surrounding each of the shops, Harry got ready for a night of the burglary. He packed his bag and placed it underneath the bed before he unrolled an electronic rope ladder. When he got to the bottom he pressed a button on a controller he had in his pocket, and he watched as the ladder slowly drew the ladder back up. Once it was back up in the window of the room he'd paid for, Harry went off to commit his first burglary.

He had no trouble getting into the shop in Ryde; all he needed to do was first put the alarm out of commission before he began cutting his way into the shop and getting in from there. He only needed to cut a small hole in, and after that he slowly squeezed himself through the gap, slowly and gently folding and twisting his body and twisting himself in, like a snake, until he was fully inside the shop. Once he straightened himself up, stretching his arms and legs and getting a nice few pops in return, he got straight to work. He was in and out within twenty minutes.

The second burglary was just as simple, but it was the first burglary that would be the problem.

Harry had just finished putting the alarms out of condition and he had just made the hole before he started to squeeze himself into the hole. He stretched one arm through the hole to act as as a grapple before he laid his head down as flat as it would go and he began to push himself through, squeezing himself in while he used his legs to push himself in before he was through.

Harry stretched out a little bit before he took his torch out and he began to have a look around. The jewellery shop wasn't that much bigger than some of the stores he had seen on the island, and he took the drill he had been using on the last two burglaries on the locks. He opened three of the cases and then emptied them into the already full bag he had stuffed full of jewellery from the previous two break-ins, but before he could even touch the jewellery inside the case, he froze when he heard voices outside and he quickly turned the torch off, thankful it had been on the floor and wasn't immediately visible to anyone outside.

He went very still and he listened in.

He didn't have long to wait.

"Okay, get those alarms sorted out. We won't have long."

"Alright, Paul."

_Two voices so far, _Harry mused to himself as he continued to listen.

"What are you gonna do with your share?" a third voice asked.

"Get as far from this island as possible," a fourth voice replied.

_Four burglars? That's a bit overkill, isn't it for a place this small?_ he asked himself.

Suddenly Harry grimaced when he saw the bright flash of the cutting torch they were going to use. He bit his lip, knowing that in a few seconds from now someone was going to discover the hole he had cut, and sure enough…

"Hold on, where did this hole come from?"

And… "Paul…. someone's busted this alarm. It's a professional job."

Silence. And then…. "Someone's inside, or they've already finished," this 'Paul' stated.

"What do we do?"

Paul blew out a deep breath. "We still go in."

"But if someone's been in there-," the fourth guy began, but Paul spoke over him.

"We have been planning this burglary for some time. We deliberately chose this one so we can get to the mainland quickly. We have the car near the ferry terminal."

"I said we should have gone to the one in Ryde-!"

"Or to the one in Shanklin-"

"no. Yes, we could have gone to either of them, but this place is closer to the ferry than the one in Ryde. We may have left pictures and footage on CCTV if we had chosen the shops in either Shanklin or Ryde. We needed to get to the mainland quickly and quietly."

_This guy is good, _Harry thought to himself.

"Paul, I've just had a thought. What if he's still inside the shop?"

Harry closed his eyes, cursing the synaptic firework explosion that had just gone in the mind of the burglar who'd come up with that thought.

When Paul spoke again he sounded both annoyed and frustrated. "Well, we'll just have to make sure he isn't. Charlie, stay out here, make sure he doesn't get out."

Harry was just thinking to himself this Charlie would have problems doing that just as he heard Charlie's acknowledgement while Harry went underneath the counter after making sure he grabbed all of his tools while mentally thinking it was a pity he'd only broken into a few of the cases but it couldn't be helped. It took only a few minutes before three-quarters of the gang finished the work and broke in. Harry remained where he was as they came in like a bull in a China shop.

"How could someone squeeze through a gap like that?" one of the gang was saying.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes, it does," the burglar who'd brought up the matter of the gap said persistently.

Paul instantly shut him up. "It looks like we spooked him. The gap is weird, yeah, but we're in here now and some of the jewellery is still inside the cases. Now…shut up and quit this guesswork, and let's just get on with it. We've only got a few hours before daybreak."

Harry sat back in his space. He only felt a small amount of discomfort being squeezed in this space. As part of his self-taught contortionist training, Harry had trained himself to get as much comfort in as small and confined spaces as he could find. This was nothing. In any case, he had cast a simple notice-me-not charm on himself so the gang wouldn't notice or see him even if they saw the sight of one of his fingers sticking out. Harry closed his eyes and went into a meditative state while he sat it out, paying only half of his attention to the burglary going on around him.

Finally, Harry came out of his trance when something Paul said got through his filtering mechanism.

"Right, that's as good as it's going to get," he said, "I had hoped we'd get it all, but there's nothing we can do about that. We're just going to have to thank whoever the bastard who got in before us didn't manage to get into all the cases, so we've got some of our own. Now let's get out of here - we've got a ferry to catch."

Harry listened as the gang got out of the jewellery shop but he didn't move until he was certain they were gone. Finally, he unfolded himself with practiced skill, and he stood up, dragging his bags with him as he stood up. He cast a single look around the shop, noting every single case had been broken into and everything was gone. Harry sighed and he admitted defeat, but he was pleased he had managed to burgle the shops in Newport and in Ryde although he had avoided the one in Shanklin because he hadn't wanted to go too far overboard.

Harry grabbed his things - the tools and the bag full of jewellery, and he poked his head slowly out of the now open door.

"Homenum revellio," he cast the spell.

No-one was nearby hiding or lying in wait. Paul and those other burglars had genuinely thought he must have found another way out just as they were about to break in without realising the truth. It made no difference. Harry walked through the streets, keeping the notice-me-not charm on himself as he headed back to the rented car he'd gotten for his time on the island.

He slipped inside and he closed the door, taking the charm off on the way. He smirked as he thought about the calling-cards he had left in the two jewellery shops he'd burgled before coming here, to Cowes. When the police found them at the shops, they would probably think he was behind this one in Cowes, although they might wonder why he hadn't left a sign for them to find, and he didn't really care either way. The important part was over. He had done what he had set out to achieve and he had succeeded for the most part, and he didn't really give a damn how those other burglars felt that he had gotten in before them. He smirked wider as he wondered how they would take it, but it was irrelevant. They would find out much later when they got to the mainland.

And as he got on the catamaran the next day, drinking his hot chocolate on the trip back home, he thought about those burglars again and he considered their reactions to the news that they were going to be hit with soon. He wondered if they would have a heart attack before going into shock over the news.

Rag-Doll was back.


End file.
